I'
The Great Utopia
The Russian and Soviet A .^ant-Garde,
1915-1932
—<■■■ ■
GUGGENHE
M
MUSEUM
The Great Utopia
The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde,
1915-1932
During the years 1915-32, Moscow and Petrograd (from 1924,
Leningrad) witnessed revolutions in art and politics that changed the
course of Modernist art and modern history. Though the great
revolution in art — the radical formal innovations constituted by
Vladimir Tatlin's "material assemblages" and Kazimir Malevich's
Suprematism — in fact preceded the political revolution by several
years, the full weight of the new expressive possibilities was felt only
after, and to a large extent because of, the social upheavals of February
and October 191J. As avant-garde artists, armed with new insights
into form and materials , sought to realize the Utopian aims of the
Bolshevik Revolution, art and life seemed to merge.
In this volume, which accompanies the largest exhibition ever
mounted at the Guggenheim Museum, twenty-one essays by eminent
scholars from Germany, Great Britain, Russia, and the United States
explore the activity of the Russian and Soviet avant-garde in all its
diversity and complexity. These essays trace the work of Malevich's
Unovis (Affirmers of the New Art) collective in Vitebsk, which
introduced Suprematism' s all-encompassing geometries into the design of
textiles, ceramics, and, indeed, whole environments; the
postrevolutionary reform of art education and the creation of Moscow's
Vkhutemas (Higher Artistic-Technical Workshops), where the formal
and analytical principles of the avant-garde were the basis of
instruction; the debates over a "proletarian art" and the transition to
Constructivism, "production art, " and the "artist-constructor"; the
organization of new artist-administered "museums of artistic culture";
the "third path" in non-objective art taken by Mikhail Larionov; the
return to figuration in the mid- 1920s by the young artists — and
former students of the avant-garde — in Ost (the Society of Easel
Painters); the debates among photographers, in the late 1920s and
early 1930s, on the superiority of the fragmented or continuous image as
a representation of the new socialist reality; book, porcelain, fabric,
and stage design; and the evolution of a new architecture, from the
experimental projects of Zhivskul'ptarkh (the Synthesis of Painting,
Sculpture, and Architecture Commission) to the multistage competition,
in 1931-32, for the Palace of Soviets, which "proved" the
inapplicability of a Modernist architecture to the Bolshevik Party's
aspirations.
More than seven hundred of the finest examples of Russian and
Soviet avant-garde art are reproduced here in full color. Drawn from
public and private collections worldwide — notably, from Baku, Kiev,
Moscow, Riga, Samara, St. Petersburg, and Tashkent in the former
Soviet Union — these works are by such masters as Natan Al'tman,
ll'ia Chashnik, Aleksandra Ekster, Gustav Klutsis, El Lissitzky,
Liubov' Popova, 01' ga Rozanova, Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg,
and the Vesnin brothers.
Jacket:
Kazimir Malevich
Red Square (Painterly Realism: Peasant Woman
in Two Dimensions), 191$
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
The Great Utopia
The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde.
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012 with funding from
Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO
http://archive.org/details/grerussiOOschi
The Great Utopia
The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde,
W5-I932
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
State Tret 'iakov Gallery
State Russian Museum
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
©The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, 1992 Prefaces
©State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow, 1992 Thomas Krens, Michael Govan
©State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, 1992 x
©Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, 1992
All rights reserved Vladimir Gusev, Evgeniia Petrova, lurii Korolev
xin
ISBN: 0-89207-095-1
Jiirgen Weber
Published by the Guggenheim Museum xiv
1 07 1 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10 128
Distributed by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.
300 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10010
Printed in Japan by Toppan Printing Co., Inc.
Jacket:
Kazimir Malevich
Red Square (Painterly Realism: Peasant Woman
in Two Dimensions), 191 5
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Photo credits: Michael Agee, Jorg P. Anders,
Vladimir Babailov, Jacques Befank, Valerii Evstigneev,
Aleksandr Galkin, David Heald, Mariusz Lukawski,
Philippe Migeat, Piermarco Menini, Rudolf Nagel,
Otto E. Nelson, Ivan Nenec, Sovetskoe foto, Jim Strong,
Joseph Szaszfai, Sergei Tartakovskii, Vitalii Teplov,
Paolo Vandrasch, Igor1 Voronov, John Webb
The Great Utopia
The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde,
1915-1932
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
March i-May 10, 1992
Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
June 5-August 23, 1992
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
September 25-December 15, 1992
Lufthansa German Airlines is
the major sponsor of this exhibition
Lufthansa
Contents
The Politics of the Avant-Garde
Paul Wood
1
The Artisan and the Prophet:
Marginal Notes on Two Artistic Careers
Vasilii Rakitin
25
The Critical Reception of the 0.70 Exhibition:
Malevich and Benua
Jane A. Sharp
38
Unovis: Epicenter of a New World
Aleksandra Sbatskikh
53
COLOR PLATES 1-318
A Brief History of Obmokhu
Aleksandra Shatskikh
257
The Transition to Constructivism
Christina Lodder
266
The Place of Vkhutemas in the
Russian Avant-Garde
Natal "ia Adaskina
282
What Is Linearism?
Aleksandr Lavrent'ev
294
The Constructivists:
Modernism on the Way to Modernization
Hubertus Gassner
298
The Third Path to Non-Objectivity
Evgenii Kovtun
320
COLOR PLATES 319-482
The Poetry of Science:
Projectionism and Electroorganism
Irina Lebedeva
AA\
Terms of Transition:
The First Discussional Exhibition
and the Society of Easel Painters
Charlotte Douglas
450
The Russian Presence in the 1924
Venice Biennale
Vivian Endicott Barnett
466
The Creation of the Museum of
Painterly Culture
Svetlana Dzhafarova
AlA
Fragmentation versus Totality:
The Politics of (De)framing
Margarita Tupitsyn
482
COLOR PLATES 483-733
The Art of the Soviet Book, 1922-32
Susan Compton
609
Soviet Porcelain of the 1920s:
Propaganda Tool
Nina Lobanov-Rostovsky
622
Russian Fabric Design, 1928-32
Charlotte Douglas
634
How Meierkhol'd Never Worked with Tatlin,
and What Happened as a Result
Elena Rakitin
649
Nonarchitects in Architecture
Ana tolii Strigalev
665
Mediating Creativity and Politics: Sixty Years
of Architectural Competitions in Russia
Catherine Cooke
680
Index of Artists and Works
716
Selection Committee
Direction
Vivian Endicott Barnett, Christiane Bauermeister,
Charlotte Douglas, Svetlana Dzhafarova, Hubertus Gassner,
Evgenii Kovtun, Irina Lebedeva, Evgeniia Petrova,
Alia Povelikhina, Elena and Vasilii Rakitin, Jane A. Sharp,
Anatolii Strigalev, Margarita Tupitsyn
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Thomas Krens, Director
Michael Govan, Deputy Director
State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
Iurii Korolev, Director
Lidiia Iovleva, Deputy Director
Lidiia Romashkova, Chief Registrar and Deputy Director
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Vladimir Gusev, Director
Evgeniia Petrova, Deputy Director
Scbirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt
Christoph Vitali, Director
Vuchetich A 11- Union Art Production Association (WART)
Pavel Khoroshilov, Former Director
Aleksandr Ursin, Director
Valentin Rivkind, Deputy Director
Ministry of Culture, Russian Federation
Evgenii Sidorov, Minister
Aleksandr Shkurko, Deputy Minister
Vera Lebedeva, Head of Museum Department
Anna Kolupaeva, Assistant to Head of Museum Department
Former Ministry of Culture, USSR
Nikolai Gubenko, Minister
Genrikh Popov, Head of Department of Fine Arts
and Museums
Lidiia Zaletova, Senior Curator of Exhibitions
The Great Utopia
The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde.
Guggenheim Museum Project Staff
Project Management
Michael Govan, Deputy Director
Jane A. Sharp, Project Associate Curator
Curatorial Staff
Natasha Kurchanova, Curatorial Assistant
Sabine Lange, Curatorial Consultant
Emily Locker, Administrative Assistant
Katherine Glaser, Administrative Assistant
Nataliya Bregel, Administrative Assistant
Exhibition Design
Zaha Hadid with Patrik Schumacher
Pamela Myers, Administrator for Exhibitions
and Programming
Ali Hocek, Architectural Design Associate
Cara Galowitz, Graphic Designer
Catalogue
Anthony Calnek, Managing Editor
Jane Bobko, Project Editor
Victoria Ellison, Project Associate Editor (glossary)
Kathleen Friello, Research Assistant
Robert Hemenway (copy editor)
Massimo Vignelli (design)
Charles Davey (design and production)
Russian Project Staff
Coordination of Russian Loans
Vuchetich All-Union Artistic Production Association:
Svetlana Dzhafarova
Faina Balakhovskaia
Zel'fira Tregulova
State Tret'iakov Gallery:
Irina Lebedeva (Paintings)
Natal 'ia Sokolova
Elena Zhukova (Graphics)
State Russian Museum:
Evgeniia Petrova
Elena Ivanova (Porcelain)
Natal'ia Kozyreva (Graphics)
Liudmila Vostretsova (Graphics)
Additional Coordination
Ol'ga Kupriashchina, VUART
Natal'ia Pchelkina, Lenin Library
Galina Drezgunova, Central State Archive for
Literature and Art
Liubov' Rodnova
Ol'ga Zemliakova
Aleksandr Lavrent'ev, A. M. Rodchenko and
V. F. Stepanova Archive
Dotina Tiurina, State Shchusev Museum
Alia Povelikhina, Museum of the History of the
City of St. Petersburg
Irina Duksina, State Bakhrushin Museum
Larissa Karogodina, Kuskovo State Porcelain Museum
Marianna Bubchikova, State Historical Museum
Elena Karavaeva, VUART
Russian catalogue material
Coordination:
Svetlana Dzhafarova
Faina Balakhovskaia
Zel'fira Tregulova
Manuscript preparation:
Andrei Sarab'ianov
Irina Sorvina
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
All-Russian Museum of Decorative and Folk Art, Moscow
Art Co. Ltd. (Collection George Costakis)
Astrakhan Kustodiev Picture Gallery
Collection Thea Berggren, Chicago
Collection Merrill C. Berman
La Boetie, Inc., New York
The British Library Board
Central State Archive of the October Revolution, Moscow
Central State Archive for Literature and Art, Moscow
Collection Andrei Chernikhov, Moscow
International Iakov Chernikhov Foundation
Collection Elaine Lustig Cohen
Collection of Prints and Drawings,
The Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich
College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture,
University of Minnesota
Dagestan Museum of the Arts, Makhachkala
Dallas Museum of Art
Collection A. A. and E. D. Drevin, Moscow
Collection V. A. Dudakov and M. K. Kashuro, Moscow
Collection Zoia Ender-Masetti, Rome
Rosa Esman Gallery, New York
Eric Estorick Family Collection
Ex Libris Gallery, New York
Galerie Natan Fedorowskij, Berlin
Barry Friedman Ltd., New York
Galerie de France, Paris
Galleria internazionale d'arte moderna, Ca' Pesaro, Venice
Collection Hubertus Gassner, Kassel
Gilman Paper Company Collection
Collection John Githens, New York
Collection Krystyna Gmurzynska-Bscher, Cologne
Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Wilhelm Hack Museum, Ludwigshafen
Galerie Hoffmann, Friedberg,
Dokumentation konstruktive Kunst
Houk Friedman, New York
Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York
Collection G. Iu. Ivakin, Kiev
Collection Helix Art Center, San Diego
Historical-Architectural Archive, Moscow
Irkutsk Regional Art Museum
Ivanovo State Museum of History and the Revolution
Annely Juda Fine Art, London
Collection M. L. Khidekel1, St. Petersburg
Kuskovo State Porcelain Museum
Collection L. B. Labas, Moscow
Galerie Alex Lachmann, Cologne
Lenin Library, Moscow
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Luchkovskii Collection, Khar'kov
Lenders to the
Exhibition
Maiakovskii Museum, Moscow
Martin Muller Inc. and Modernism Inc., San Francisco
Collection Maslach Family
Collection M. Miturich, Moscow
Mukhina College Museum, St. Petersburg
Collection E. V. Murina and D. V. Sarab'ianov, Moscow
Musee national d'art moderne,
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
Museum Fridericianum, Kassel
Museum fur Gestaltung, Basel, Plakatsammlung
Museum fur Gestaltung, Zurich
Museum Ludwig (Collection Ludwig, Cologne)
Museum of Art and History, Serpukhov
Museum of Fine Arts, Ekaterinburg
Museum of the Air Force, Monino
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Muzeum Okregove, Chehn
Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz
Collection A. Nakov, Paris
Collection Lew Nussberg, United States
Galerie Alice Pauli, Lausanne
Collection A. V. Povelikhina, St. Petersburg
Primor'e Regional Picture Gallery, Vladivostok
Regional Art Museum, Kaluga
Regional Art Museum, Kirov
Regional Deineka Picture Gallery, Kursk
Regional Historical Museum, Slobodskoe
Resource Collections, The Getty Center for the History of Art
and the Humanities
A. M. Rodchenko and V. F. Stepanova Archive, Moscow
The Rothschild Art Foundation, Baltimore
Collection K. Rozhdestvenskii, Moscow
Collection Rubinshtein and Moroz, Moscow
St. Petersburg State Museum of Theater and Musical Arts
Galerie Dr. Istvan Schlegl, Zurich
Collection Il'ia Sel'vinskii Family, Moscow
Spencer Collection, The New York Public Library,
Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg, Halle
Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart
Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich
State Architecture and Art Museum, Rostov-Iaroslavskii
State Art Gallery, Kursk
State Art Museum, Iaroslavl'
State Art Museum, Nizhnii Novgorod
State Art Museum of Latvia, Riga
State Art Museum, Omsk
State Art Museum, Rostov-on-Don
State Art Museum, Samara
State Art Museum, Ulianovsk
State Bakhrushin Museum, Moscow
State Historical Museum, Moscow
State Kasteev Kazakhstan Museum of Arts, Alma-Ata
State Lunacharskii Museum of Fine Arts, Krasnodar
State Museum of Fine Arts, Nizhnii Tagil
State Museum of Russian Art, Kiev
State Museum of the Academy of Arts, St. Petersburg
State Museum of the History of the City of St. Petersburg
State Museum of Ukrainian Art, Kiev
State Mustafaev Azerbaijan Museum of Art, Baku
State Radishchev Art Museum, Saratov
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
State Shchusev Museum, Moscow
State Surikov Art Museum, Krasnoiarsk
State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Galerie Stolz, Cologne
Collection F. Syrkina, Moscow
TECTA & Stuhlmuseum Burg Beverungen, Lauenforde
Theatermuseum der Universitat zu Koln
Tobol'sk State Historical-Architectural Museum, Tobol'sk
Trekhgornaia Textile Mill, Moscow
Tsaritsyno Museum of Applied Arts, Moscow
Union of Architects, Moscow
University of East Anglia Collection
Uzbekistan State Museum of Fine Arts, Tashkent
Collection Vasil'ev, St. Petersburg
Collection von Bergmann, Dusseldorf
Vuchetich All-Union Artistic Production Association, Moscow
Collection Thomas P. Whitney
Collection Nina Williams, England
Yale University Art Gallery
Collection Dieter Zaha, Kassel
Collection L. Zhadova Family, Moscow
Collection Ziersch, Munich
Anonymous lenders from England, Germany, Italy,
Russia, Switzerland, and the United States
Even on purely stylistic and formal grounds, the Russian and
Soviet avant-garde's contribution to Modern art merits the
scale and depth of the present exhibition. Kazimir Malevich
and Vladimir Tatlin, the avant-garde's leaders, brought
Modernism to its logical conclusions even as they first fully
internalized and reinvented it in a Russian context. Yet those
ideas became starting points. The laboratory of Constructivist
and Suprematist experiments yielded visual inventions that
still influence art, architecture, and design.
In his Chernyi kvadrat (Black Square, 1915), Malevich
resolved the Modernist struggle to reduce form to its essence;
and when, for the 0.10 exhibition (Petrograd, 1915-16), the
artist hung the work in the place traditionally reserved for a
religious icon, he aspired to replace the existing order with a
new artistic ideal. Reinterpreting European Cubism, Malevich
applied the abstracting process to reduce the substance of the
world to primary forms, revealing an entirely other
dimension — an absolute, non-objective world. With his
Kontr-rel'ef (Counter-Relief , 1914-15), Tatlin took the fractured
planes of Cubism in a different but still logical direction — into
real tangible space.
Somewhere between the absolute spiritual idealism of
Malevich's Suprematism and the dramatic reality of Tatlin's
reliefs is that Utopian sensibility, within a historical context of
political and social upheaval, which released Russian art from
the studio and onto the street, and which endowed it with a
desire to pervade every aspect of life — even to become an agent
of social change.
The term "utopia" carries with it the spirit of the avant-
garde's project to place art at the service of greater social
objectives and to create harmony and order in the chaotic
world around them. Given the course history has taken in
Russia in the twentieth century, "utopia" also has connotations
of impracticality; idealism is good in theory, but not in
practice. Few images in the Russian avant-garde are more
compelling than Tatlin's construction of an Everyman's
flying machine, Letatlin (1929-32), intended to be the
utilitarian marriage of art, science, and technology — now, as
a historical relic, it recalls the legend of Icarus, who flew too
close to the sun.
One thing that can be gleaned from the scant but growing
critical analysis of the Russian avant-garde — the "Great
Experiment," as pioneering art historian Camilla Gray called
it — is that single interpretations are impossible to maintain.
Essential questions persist, relevant to our own predicament:
What is the potential for art — an essential ambition of the
avant-garde — to infiltrate and transform everyday life? Have
traditional painting and sculpture, as Rodchenko proposed,
reached the end of their cultural development in favor of more
utilitarian communications media and practical arts? What is
the relationship between art and politics? Can an aesthetic
pluralism be established and institutionalized?
In planning the exhibition, we identified three primary phases
of the avant-garde in Russia:
•First, the hegemony established by avant-garde artists
committed to Suprematism and to Tatlin's culture of
materials before the 1917 October Revolution, and the
impact of their theories in defining cultural policies after
the Revolution.
•Second, the development in the 1920s of work by artists
who sought to project principles of construction and design
into rationalized aesthetic systems through pedagogical
programs at Moscow's Vkhutemas/Vkhutein (the Higher
Artistic-Technical Workshops/Higher Artistic-Technical
Institute) and group shows such as the Obmokhu (Society
of Young Artists) exhibitions and the Pervaia diskussionnaia
vystavka ob "edinenii aktivnogo revoliutsionnogo iskusstva (First
Discussional Exhibition of Associations of Active Revolutionary
Art, Moscow, 1924).
•And third, the pluralism of the 1920s — the emergence of
new debates over figuration in the media of photography,
photomontage, and painting, and the impact of
Constructivist theory upon architectural practice.
Our exhibition, The Great Utopia, attempts to map out the
vast territory of vanguard artistic production in Russia,
beginning in 1915 with the 0.10 exhibition, where Malevich's
square and Tatlin's relief were first shown, and ending in 1932
with the competition for the Palace of Soviets in Moscow and
the First Five- Year Plan, at which time the "left wing" in art
lost credibility in the face of Stalin's stern program to build an
industrialized Soviet Union.
At its core, the exhibition emphasizes the utopianism of the
vanguard project, the tensions between radical affirmations of
the autonomy of art and the projection of aesthetic concerns
into daily life through design; the exhibition attempts to
contextualize issues of style by emphasizing the institutional
and ideological foundations for much of the production of
vanguard work.
By representing the plurality of approaches to Utopian
abstraction, the curators demonstrate the essential continuity
of the vanguard project before and after the Revolution, in
terms of individual artists' contributions and in their collective
(and competitive) struggle to play leading roles in the
formation of a new consciousness.
This exhibition presents a nearly complete sample of the
artistic documents of the Russian and Soviet avant-garde — laid
out in all of their diversity, beauty, and contradictions. The
exhibition encompasses almost all media, with the notable
exception of film, which it was not possible to exhibit because
the renovation of the Guggenheim Museum theater has been
postponed. No exhibition on the topic has included such a
comprehensive representation of artists and of works drawn
from so many collections. Seventy percent of the objects were
Prefaces
borrowed from Russian museums and private collections, as
well as from museums in Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, and
Latvia. Many of the works on view are being seen for the first
time by American and European audiences.
The scale of the exhibition is a function of an urgent need
we felt for the full scope of the period to be presented at once,
for the benefit both of the devoted scholars and students of the
avant-garde who continue to define its complex history and
circumstances and of a larger public that will be able to
comprehend the breadth and the uniqueness of this movement
in the history of art.
The task of assembling such a broad range of material from
such a wide range of sources demanded a unique organizational
structure. Obviously, no single curator commands a detailed
expertise encompassing all of the works and their myriad
locations, many of them obscure. A number of sources had to
be combined simply to create a working checklist from which
to draw a final selection.
In addition, since the history of the avant-garde in Russia,
in comparison to the history of European Modernism, is still in
part uncharted, no single interpretation is dominant. From its
inception, the exhibition necessarily demanded a variety of
perspectives in order to select and shape its content.
The team of curators and experts appointed in June 1989
defined the conceptual guidelines for the exhibition and culled
working lists of literally thousands of objects from Western
and Russian public and private collections. The team of
museum and independent curators from Russia, Germany, and
the United States — Vivian Endicott Barnett, Christiane
Bauermeister, Charlotte Douglas, Svetlana Dzhafarova,
Hubertus Gassner, Evgenii Kovtun, Irina Lebedeva, Evgeniia
Petrova, Alia Povelikhina, Elena and Vasilii Rakitin, Jane A.
Sharp, Anatolii Strigalev, and Margarita Tupitsyn — was chosen
to encompass a variety of specializations and backgrounds.
Over a period of almost three years and in meetings in Moscow,
St. Petersburg, Frankfurt, and New York, the lists were
narrowed down to a group of over 900 works that the
curatorial team felt would provide the most comprehensive and
coherent overview of the period.
It was also a post-Cold War spirit of collaboration that
inspired our effort to structure a project that would be a joint
venture of American, European, and Soviet/Russian expertise
and organizational foundations. The idea originated in the
spring of 1988, when Eduard Shevardnadze, then Soviet Foreign
Minister, toured the Guggenheim. That summer in Moscow, a
first official protocol was created to initiate the project.
As the exhibition was being organized, the Soviet Union
underwent the most dramatic and overwhelming changes since
the Bolshevik Revolution. With the emergence of perestroika,
a great sense of optimism fueled the establishment of the
exhibition as a joint East- West venture. Further changes in
Russia meant the reorganization of cultural as well as
governmental bureaucracies, which could have halted the
project, were it not for the patience, dedication, and.
communication of all of the institutions involved, including
the continued participation of the Russian (formerly Soviet)
Foreign Ministry represented especially by Anatolii
Adamishin, now Ambassador to Italy, and by Vladimir
Petrovsky, Under-Secretary General of the United Nations,
whose deep involvement with international cultural issues
dates at least to his attendance at the inauguration of the
Guggenheim Museum's Frank Lloyd Wright building in 1959.
The two major Russian museums — the State Tret'iakov
Gallery in Moscow, led by Iurii Korolev, and the State Russian
Museum in St. Petersburg, led by Vladimir Gusev and Deputy
Director Evgeniia Petrova — committed their staffs and their
important collections to this exhibition. The Vuchetich All-
Union Artistic Production Association (VUART) — under
former Director Pavel Khoroshilov, Director Aleksandr Ursin,
and Deputy Director Valentin Rivkind — took on the very
difficult task of coordinating loans from over fifty provincial
and other museums throughout the former Soviet Union. The
Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation — led by
Minister Evgenii Sidorov and Head of Museum Department
Vera Lebedeva — lent their critical official support and
logistical assistance, as had the former Ministry of Culture of
the USSR, led by Nikolai Gubenko with assistance from
Genrikh Popov and Lidiia Zaletova.
Christoph Vitali, Director of the Schirn Kunsthalle,
Frankfurt — one of the most prominent cultural institutions in
Germany and also the first host of this exhibition— was the
critical link in Europe in all aspects of negotiation and
organization.
At the Guggenheim, all of the selection lists, research,
loans, and catalogue contents were coordinated over the course
of three years by a competent and specialized staff led by Jane
A. Sharp, Project Associate Curator. With her curatorial
expertise, impressive facility with the Russian language, and
thorough approach to the exhibition's organization on every
level, Jane Sharp was the hub holding together the project's
many spokes. Natasha Kurchanova, Curatorial Assistant,
managed the English/Russian database of thousands of objects
and provided important research and loan coordination with
the further assistance of Sabine Lange, Emily Locker, Katherine
Glaser, and Nataliya Bregel. Linda Thacher, Associate
Registrar, professionally handled the endless details and
logistics of the international transport of objects. Erik Quam,
Information Systems Analyst, designed and supported the
database related to the works of art.
In Moscow, a parallel organization was coordinated at
VUART by Svetlana Dzhafarova, Zel'fira Tregulova, and Faina
Balakhovskaia, without whose professional work and tireless
effort the exhibition simply would not have been possible.
They, in concert with Deputy Director Evgeniia Petrova at the
State Russian Museum and Curators Irina Lebedeva and
Ekaterina Seleznova at the State Tret'iakov Gallery and
representatives of other museums, coordinated the loans of all
objects in the former Soviet Union.
The catalogue itself was a monumental and unique project
begun over three years ago. The content, determined by the
curatorial team, was intended to make the book a
comprehensive reference that would be of value for years to
come. Authors include not only members of the working group
but such well-known scholars as Natal'ia Adaskina, Susan
Compton, Nina Lobanov-Rostovksy, Christina Lodder,
Aleksandra Shatskikh, and Paul Wood. Managing Editor
Anthony Calnek oversaw the production of what is the most
ambitious catalogue in the Guggenheim's history. The editing
of the book was handled with extraordinary skill and
dedication by Jane Bobko. The talented American catalogue
team also included Victoria Ellison, Associate Editor for the
glossary, Robert Hemenway, copy editor, and Charles Davey,
production and design consultant, as well as Research Assistant
Kathleen Friello. Massimo Vignelli created the simple and
elegant catalogue design in keeping with his new graphic
system for the Guggenheim.
A complementary catalogue team worked in Russia,
coordinated by Svetlana Dzhafarova, Zel'fira Tregulova, and
Faina Balakhovskaia and including editors Andrei Sarab'ianov
and Irina Sorvina.
The extraordinary design of the exhibition is due to
architect Zaha Hadid, who, with Pamela Myers at the
Guggenheim, made the exhibition accessible and provocative
in the Frank Lloyd Wright space and new Gwathmey Siegel
and Associates tower. The exhibition marks the first occasion
on which the two spaces have been used as a single entity.
All in all, the exhibition touched almost every person in
each of the organizing institutions in New York, in Russia, and
in Frankfurt.
Perhaps most important, the exhibition is the product of
the cooperation of lenders — museums and private collections.
The State Tret'iakov Gallery and State Russian Museum
treasures form the core of the exhibition, surrounded by works
from Russia, Europe, and the United States. The central
contribution from the collection of the late George Costakis,
both from his estate and from the group of works he
generously donated to the State Tret'iakov Gallery, deserves
special note. Costakis, whose long association with the
Guggenheim included the 1981 exhibition of his holdings,
acquired and protected the richest collection of its kind at a
time when almost no institutional attention was being paid to
this revolutionary chapter in the history of art.
The exhibition represents the most complex logistical effort
ever undertaken by the Guggenheim, involving more people
and institutions around the world than any other of the
museum's projects and requiring sponsorship from the start. It
can often be simply a formality to acknowledge a sponsor. In
this case, Lufthansa German Airlines cannot be identified
merely as an exhibition sponsor with a natural regard for
culture, although it is one of the most active corporate
supporters of cultural events throughout the United States,
Europe, and Russia. Rather, Lufthansa served as a
collaborator — bringing people together, carrying precious
information as well as people and art, and providing assistance
(including translation and communications) in negotiations.
Jiirgen Weber, President and CEO, is dedicated, as was his
predecessor, Heinz Ruhnau, to a world linked by the high
technology of air travel as well as by the essential fabric of
cultural communication. That Lufthansa's dedication to culture
is deeply rooted in its mission to connect people is no more
evident than in the work of Nicolas II ji ne, Director of Public
Affairs, who was present with Dr. Heinrich Klotz, Director of
the Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, at the
inception of the project. Through his equal dedication to
people, culture, and business, Nic Iljine was a source of
expertise and inspiration throughout a long and complex
process.
In sum, it might be stated that the urgency and importance
of this unique project is evidenced by the extraordinary hard
work, commitment, and faith it inspired in its participants.
Utopia is not at hand, but the art of the Russian and Soviet
avant-garde in this exhibition may plainly demonstrate some of
its essential components — that a blueprint for the future may
be more likely found on the margins of our consciousness than
at its center; that it may require the invention of a new starting
point (the zero form of Malevich's Black Square), the
progressive involvement of every stratum of society, and the
engagement with a diversity of changing aesthetics that
becomes the foundation of a practical system of human
communication in the midst of a changing world.
— Thomas Krens, Director
Michael Govan, Deputy Director
The Russian avant-garde is a chapter of art history which
demands a higher level of knowledge. While many collections
around the world house Russian masterpieces from this period
and many worthy publications and important exhibitions have
presented the originality of Russian culture in the years before
and after the October Revolution, these collections and surveys
have only highlighted the many nuances and riches of this
culture that remain to be explored. Moreover, most of the
exhibitions focusing on the Russian avant-garde have discussed
the works of art within the narrow framework of the
Revolution. As a result, artistic processes have often been
neglected in favor of the political and social implications of
the works.
The history and role of Russian avant-garde art are far more
complex. These artists, despite being intimately bound by the
social and political situation of their country, were absorbed as
never before by questions of pure aesthetics. The world of the
European Modernists — a world which had opened to Russian
artists for the first time and whose development they followed
with lively interest — combined with their own artistic,
literary, and philosophical heritage to create a unique context
for innovative creative experiments.
At the turn of the century, an artistic vocabulary capable of
describing all possible experiences seemed unquestionably in
place. In Russia, the newly defined world order and life-style
required new forms of expression. While the artists central to
the vanguard movement — Mikhail Larionov, Natal'ia
Goncharova, Vasilii Kandinskii, Kazimir Malevich, Pavel
Filonov, and others — did not come fully into their own with
the Revolution, the events of 1917 focused their maturation. In
the diversity of artistic movements in Russia from 1910 to
1920, two principal trends can be clearly discerned and
differentiated. One trend describes the emotional-intuitive
penetration of the material world, and the other tries to
understand matters through a rational-Constructivist analysis.
As a result, the initial working title for the present exhibition
was Construction and Intuition. Although this title was
eventually changed, the two themes helped to define the
concept at the heart of the exhibition: the tension within the
Russian avant-garde between rational and irrational
experiences and representations of the world.
In a political sense, this exhibition comes perhaps too late.
Since the early 1980s, the idea of romantic underpinnings to
the Revolution has lost popularity. Yet the artistic might of
this era, with its gathering of creative energies and
investigations, has continued to hold its ground against more
short-lived political ideologies and economies. It is therefore
that much more important for the public to be able to see for
the first time the breadth of Russian avant-garde art without
a background of political fervor — to see it in peace and to be
able to measure fully its place in the development of a:t in
our world.
Our heartfelt thanks to our partners in this project, Thomas
Krens, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in
New York and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice;
Michael Govan, Deputy Director of the Guggenheim Museum;
and Christoph Vitali, Director of the Schirn Kunsthalle
Frankfurt.
American, German, and Russian experts have contributed
to extensive research and to developing the complex thematic
structure of the exhibition. This was not only a fruitful
collaboration for the exhibition but also a personal
accomplishment for each individual involved.
Equal thanks are due to the sponsor of the exhibition,
Lufthansa German Airlines; to Nicolas Iljine, Director of
Public Affairs at Lufthansa, who followed the nearly four years
of preparations with great sympathy, involvement, and
patience; to the former Soviet Ministry of Culture and its staff;
and to the Vuchetich All-Union Artistic Production
Association (VUART), with Valentin Rivkind at the helm.
Finally, we are tremendously grateful to all museums and
private lenders for the very generous gift of their works as loans
to the exhibition.
— Vladimir Gusev, Director
Evgeniia Petrova, Deputy Director
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
Iurii Korolev, Director
State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow
Like few other artistic movements of this century, the Russian
avant-garde — with its group of young, overwhelmingly
enthusiastic, and energetic artists — continues to excite,
fascinate, and captivate.
A comprehensive look at this creative period between 1915
and 1932 is dramatically presented for the first time in The
Great Utopia. The exhibition opened to great acclaim at
Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle, and subsequently at
Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum. We are delighted that the
show can now be seen at the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum in New York, the final venue on its international
tour. Lufthansa welcomes another opportunity to foster cultural
exchange by bringing this monumental work to the
handsomely restored and newly expanded Guggenheim.
The Great Utopia brings together both individuals and
works of art in an international exchange of culture. Through
its support of the exhibition in New York, Lufthansa hopes to
demonstrate its commitment to worldwide cultural
communications. We feel that it is especially important to
establish ties with nations that have recently opened their
doors to the rest of the world. That is why our airline has
expanded its services to Eastern Europe. And through
exhibitions such as The Great Utopia, we hope cultural ties with
these nations will also flourish, strengthening human relations
and furthering mutual understanding.
— Jiirgen Weber
Chairman of the Executive Board
Lufthansa German Airlines
Lufthansa
Editorial Note
Transliteration of Russian and Ukrainian in this book follows
the Library of Congress system, modified by the omission of
diacritical marks. With the exception of artists who had
substantial careers in the West and whose names would be
rendered unrecognizable by transliteration (such as Marc
Chagall), the transliterated form of Russian names is used
throughout (Vasilii Kandinskii, for example, in place of Vasily
Kandinsky). Russian surnames of foreign origin have not been
restored to their Western form but transliterated (thus Lancere
rather than Lanceray). The names of non-Russian artists whose
activity was concentrated in Russia likewise appear in their
Russian rather than native form (Gustav Klutsis rather than
Gustavs Klucis).
With some exceptions, geographical names and the names
of institutions follow the Russian and have not been
anglicized. Many of these names, moreover, changed during
the period covered herein; since August 1991, in the wake of
developments in the former Soviet Union, many have changed
yet again. The city founded by Peter the Great, for example,
was called St. Petersburg until August 1914, Petrograd until
January 1924, and Leningrad until September 1991 — when the
name St. Petersburg was restored. Such fluctuations are
observed in these pages, where the choice among variant
geographical and institutional names has been determined by
context.
Renderings of the names of individuals, institutions, and
places, as well as renderings of Russian words, that appear in
citations from published English sources have not been altered
to fit the prevailing system of transliteration. Nor have any
"corrections" been made, in citations from artists' statements
and manifestos, of the nonstandard capitalization often used
for rhetorical purposes in such documents.
Dates up to February 14, 1918, are given according to the
Julian (or Old Style) calendar, and after that according to the
Gregorian (or New Style) calendar. Before 1900, the Julian
calendar in use in Russia was twelve days behind the
Gregorian; from 1900 to 1918, it was thirteen days behind.
The avant-garde in Russia has a complex history. The two
essays in this volume that tackle the chronology of Obmokhu
(the Society of Young Artists) are evidence of the scholarly
dialogue in progress.
Permission was granted for the essays by Vivian Endicott
Barnett, Susan Compton, Charlotte Douglas, Christina Lodder,
Jane A. Sharp, Margarita Tupitsyn, and Paul Wood to appear
first in English in De Grote Utopie, published by the Stedelijk
Museum, Amsterdam; they are published here in slightly
different form. Vasilii Rakitin's essay appears here in an
English translation different from that published in De Grote
Utopie.
The Politics of the
Avant-Garde
Paul Wood
l don't know how radical you are or how radical I am. I am certainly
not radical enough; that is, one must always try to be as radical as
reality itself.
— Lenin
fig. I
Simplified model ofTatlin's Monument to the Third
International in a street demonstration. Moscow, ca. ip2y.
After many decades of occlusion, the art of the Russian avant-
garde is now widely available, presented with a clarity and
scope which must once have seemed impossible. There are
monographs on each of the major figures, and for some artists
more than one. Extensive international exhibitions of their
works have been mounted. These have been accompanied by
surveys revealing interconnections in the work of major and
minor producers alike. Linked to such exhibitions, where once
a scrap of misinformation about Constructivism sufficed,
weighty catalogues have become indispensable. Certain key
documents are available in a variety of collections, frequently
standing as monuments in their own right to the ferment of
intellectual activity that accompanied the avant-garde practice.
Furthermore, the main contours of the institutions both formal
and informal which exerted such a decisive influence upon
individual production have been filled in to an extent which
even a decade ago must have seemed unlikely: reorganizations
at Vkhutemas (the Higher Artistic-Technical Workshops),
debates at Inkhuk (the Institute of Artistic Culture); we even
know how many carriages the agit trains had, not to mention
where they ran and what function they fulfilled. Scholarly
articles regularly appear in a range of journals, often linked to
detailed doctoral investigations. Metaphors of trickles, floods,
even avalanches are inadequate to describe a collective
enterprise of almost military dimensions to lay bare the
trammeled soul of Soviet avant-gardism. If present trends
continue, by the end of the century Moscow will be as
academically well trodden as Montmartre. Yet this is a century
for most of which Russia has been a kind of intellectual dark
continent, probed, if at all, by hostile Kremlinologists rather
than sympathetic students of a vivid cultural constellation. Are
we not lucky, then, that the tenebrous coils of prejudice are
finally being parted? And, of course, all this work, from
encyclopedic summation to diligently unearthed fragment, is
valuable, the very stuff of intellectual advance. Why, then, the
rustle, the murmur, the thickening, the steady coagulation of
the sense of a Problem?
It is, after all, simply put. With notable exceptions, studies
of the Russian avant-garde have become, in a Kuhnian sense,
"normal science." And yet the work to which it adverts is
anything but. This is not an insignificant matter, though it is
not a very widely acknowledged one. It is a problem that has
always existed and that has never gone away but just seems to
have become invisible. Like some otherwise defenseless creature
in a hostile environment, the question of the politics of the
avant-garde has blended into the tangled undergrowth of facts
and names, research grants, footnotes, and scholarly
paraphernalia. Yet there are sharp teeth lurking here, and
narrow eyes peering through crevices in the piles of documents.
And it is precisely these eyes, both menacing and beautiful,
which constitute the attraction in the first place. The
revolutionary avant-garde is not of interest for its normativity.
Aleksandr Blok wasn't joking when he summoned Europe to
the "bright feast of peace and brotherhood and labor" with the
"strings of a Scythian lyre": "Are we to blame if your rib cages
burst / beneath our paws' impulsive ardor?" Blok's warning
could doubtless be written off as a romantic evocation of the
Revolution's most backward aspects — all slave girls, wild
horses, and Asiatic jubilation — when the Revolution was really
about tractors and planning. But a revolution is a revolution,
and the academic researcher padding noiselessly through
carpeted libraries or, indeed, faxing documents from one
international center of learning to another would do well to
remember that Aleksandr Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, Varvara
Stepanova, Vladimir Maiakovskii, Dziga Vertov, Gustav
Klutsis, and the rest, working in conditions of privation to
begin with and harsh censorship later, were all, without
exception, explicitly committed to working-class revolution —
out of which a new order of international socialism would arise.
One should not overlook the paradox that the very research
which progressively reveals the contours of the Soviet avant-
garde is predicated on the historic defeat of the avant-garde's
social vision. By whom, by just which forces, is not quite so
easy to say. To echo the sentiments of a thinker little
acknowledged in these late days of cultural studies: "What is
to be done?"
It is an irony upon a paradox that in setting out to answer
the question, in attempting to clarify the politics of the avant-
garde, there is no other starting point than this unglamorous
one, this place where we are. Our starting point consists of
these apparent conclusions, this pile of books, this trail of
articles: not, after all, the soul of revolutionary Petrograd but
the "soul" of the bourgeois academy. The Russian avant-garde,
Constructivism, Socialist Realism even, are what they have
been made to mean in these pages, in the play of their silences
and their affirmations. To ponder the paradox is, in effect, a
question of resistance: resisting various normalizations enforced
by the history our own culture is writing.
I
It is quite clear that one of the central factors that has fueled
historians' widespread desire to confront the Soviet avant-
garde — either positively or negatively — is its proximity to the
Russian Revolution. This is so obvious that it sounds almost
strange to insist upon it. In the days before such claims lost
their vogue, E. H. Carr said that the Revolution had been the
source of more profound repercussions than any other historical
event of modern times. Be that as it may, the Revolution has
been the source of greatest controversy in modern times at the
level of interpretation: interpreters range from the inhabitants
of the most ethereal superstructures to the state planners and
military strategists at the other end of the spectrum. This
controversy's sheer scale has increasingly drawn art historians
into its orbit, though motives have, of course, varied. On one
side there has been what amounts, more or less, to a myth of
buried treasure: avant-garde artworks from the heroic period
that have lain in attics and basements for decades being led
blinking into the light of modern scholarship. For historians of
this persuasion, ideology has probably counted for little next to
the glamour of the quest, which can range from a tomb-
robbing lust for gold in its darker reaches to an honorable
desire to shed light on a lost but incontrovertibly significant
chapter of twentieth-century art. For other historians, the
ideological factor has surely played an important role.
Confronted in their own productive lives, within and without
the academy, by institutional orthodoxies requiring resistance,
they find that the art of the most thoroughgoing of all
moments of resistance holds a powerful attraction. Thus for
both left-wing and liberal historians, the relation of the avant-
garde to the Revolution has, in different ways, been a prime
motivator: either to recover the work from burial by the
Revolution understood as closure or to restore that work as
evidence of the Revolution's heroic challenge to orthodoxy and
stasis across the board of human endeavor, before its rapid
eclipse.
For all that, the precise nature of the avant-garde's
relationship to the Revolution has tended to remain
underinvestigated. This is the case despite the increasing detail
of particular studies, as well as the enormously deepened
understanding of the avant-garde's technical innovations —
even when these latter have been read in terms of their
significant connection to the revolutionary project of social
emancipation. That is to say, as the historical account has
developed both extensively and intensively, the question of the
politics of the avant-garde has been left relatively
underresearched .
This is due, in part, to the simple fact of gaps in the
historical record. Until the 1970s, little enough was available
empirically. As recently as 1983, what gave Christina Lodder's
Russian Constructivism its benchmark status was preeminently
the fact that nobody had previously brought such information
to light. To know who said what at Inkhuk in 1922, let alone
be able to fit it into a context of debate on key technical and
theoretical issues, marked of itself a qualitative advance. The
silence cannot be laid wholly at the door of ignorance, however.
It is, to a greater degree, reflexive: it has to do with the
ideological commitments and blindnesses, interests and
silences (sometimes explicit, more often implicit, if not deeply
buried) of the collective academic psyche in the liberal-
bourgeois educational institutions of the late-capitalist West.
For all its epochal status, outside the ranks of a few specialists
the historical shape of the Russian Revolution is little enough
known; and for each lacuna in the record there is a pathology of
mistrust, uninterest, and fear to account for it.
The manner in which the avant-garde's political alignments
have been represented in the literature may be generalized
under three headings, though these have changed over time
and, obviously, been subject to inflection. The hegemonic
response, until recently at least, has paradoxically been to
dissociate the avant-garde from involvement with
revolutionary politics. This "disengagement" thesis can adopt
various forms. Traditionally, Constructivism, in the sense of an
avant-garde art practice that was transmuted into a more direct
cluster of interventions into daily life under the rubric of "art
into production," was simply ignored. What "Constructivism"
tended to mean was an international subvariant of abstract
sculpture within a broadly Modernist tradition, associated with
artists, such as Naum Gabo, who had left Russia shortly after
the Revolution. Limited and misrepresentative as this now
seems, it is sobering to recall that it was probably the
dominant view from the 1930s to the 1970s — let us say, from
Alfred Barr's brief and ambiguous homage to Lef (the Left
Front of the Arts) in 1928 to Camilla Gray in 1962. Even major
figures like Rodchenko were little known, others like Klutsis
not at all; and the relations of such work to an intellectual and
political program simply fell outside the scope of what passed
for the history of modern art. Dark days, then, whose end is
not to be regretted. It would, however, be unwise to celebrate a
passage into light.
A small selection of quite recent examples will suffice. John
Bowlt has established a reputation at the head of his field
largely through his efforts to establish the density of this
period of Russian artistic culture, the coexistence of a variety of
different strands of art practice. The lasting benefit of his
enterprise has undoubtedly been to relativize Western art
history's tendency to become fixated upon the Soviet avant-
garde in a narrow sense, (mis)construing it as a precursor of
postwar, principally American, vanguard art; and, by contrast,
to place the work of that wing of the avant-garde in a
perspective of other trends ranging from the realistic to the
fantastic. The price of this pluralism, fueled, one may
speculate, by the detente politics of the 1970s, has, it seems,
been to bend the stick too far in the other direction and
depoliticize the avant-garde tout court. "Perhaps the most
dangerous rumor concerning the Russian avant-garde has to do
with its alleged support of radical politics, and radical political
philosophy in general."' This was written by Bowlt in 1984.
Chapter and verse surely no longer need to be given. Yet for an
author deeply familiar with the writings of that avant-garde to
advance such a claim at that late date is remarkable and must,
one assumes, be motivated by considerations concerning the
social relations of art quite discrete from the substance of the
historical record itself.
For their part, surely, Rodchenko, Klutsis, Lissitzky,
Maiakovskii, and others could not have been clearer about their
commitment to the Revolution and to the task of building a
new society. Take only the simplest example: the program of
Lef itself. Maiakovskii in a letter of 1923 charges his
correspondent to remember "the purpose for which we have
united our efforts," which he then defines as "communist art (as
part of corn-culture and communism in general!)."2 There is a
threefold articulation here: a Communist art — quite a
specialized thing, which by Maiakovskii's own admission has
not yet been fully developed and which it is the business of Lef
to promulgate; the relation of this to a wider Communist
culture — which is to say, something akin to Marx's
"superstructure," the range of institutions both formal and
informal wherein social consciousness organizes itself and in
which "art" per se is only a part; and then a relation of this to
Communist society, by which Maiakovskii obviously means a
social mode of production, the "base," which will underwrite
the achievement of the other two. This is highly schematic.
But it is also programmatic and not at all incidental to the
project of Lef — which is, in its turn, central to what we mean
when we speak of the "Soviet avant-garde" at all. Examples
could, of course, be multiplied.
All this makes it difficult to entertain claims about the
avant-garde's political virginity. Yet the thesis is not confined
to American authors, who have, after all, suffered a uniquely
depoliticized intellectual tradition. Andrei Nakov offers an
example of one European variant in a study of Rodchenko
which simply omits mention of factors ranging beyond the
formal and technical — an omission which is the more
surprising given the artist's own frequent invocation of a
sociopolitical dimension to his work.' Such exclusions — sins of
omission, as it were, rather than commission — might be
defensible on grounds of relevance, space, and so forth. Not so
the stance of the Russian historian Vasilii Rakitin: "In practice
the artists who were practitioners of the 1920s left agit-art, a
Rodchenko or Lissitzky, have much less in common with leftist
sociological hypotheses than has been supposed."4 This is not a
claim that there is no relationship, just that it is not central to
the avant-garde project; it is not, however, the simple omission
of a set of determinations, as in the previous instance, but an
explicit thesis about the relation of the avant-garde to
revolutionary politics — and the relation it claims is one of
relative disinvolvement. Yet throughout the twenties,
Lissitzky 's writings are replete with references to the value of
art residing in its relationship to the community, and to the
requirement that artists abandon a conventional sense of
artistic work and participate in the development of new forms
of community to achieve the goal of a classless society. This
endeavor is held to have serious repercussions, moreover, in
that it results in the opposition of other, more conservative,
artists to the left project: "New space neither needs nor
demands pictures — it is not a picture transposed on a surface.
This explains the painters' hostility towards us: v/e are
destroying the wall as the resting place for their pictures."1
This "new space" is linked to a conception of a modern world,
a world whose modernity, furthermore, resides not merely in
new technology but in new social relations. "It is to the social
revolution rather than to the technological revolution" that the
basic elements of Lissitzky 's work are tied.6 In 1930, he
published a whole book to this effect with the unambiguous
title of Architektur fur eine Weltrevolution {An Architecture for
World Revolution). After several years' residence in the West
during the midtwenties, and in marked contrast to those like
Gabo who could not leave the Soviet Union fast enough after
the Civil War ended and Bolshevik power was consolidated,
Lissitzky went back to Russia because, as his wife put it:
"There were tasks of a special kind awaiting him. He was
needed in his homeland; the Soviet Union needed all his
knowledge, his experience, his art."7
There is a case, let us put it no more strongly than that, for
the partial determination of the avant-garde by the example of
the successful Bolshevik Revolution. The argument against
this relies almost completely on the Soviet avant-garde's roots
in a prerevolutionary avant-garde art movement, on the one
hand, and its relationship to postwar West European
developments in architecture and design during the 1920s, on
the other. The existence of these relations does not, however,
refute the specificity of the conjuncture of the avant-garde and
the Revolution within the Soviet Union. It is a peculiar kind of
history which wants to claim almost as a point of principle that
the one set of connections debars the other, yet such has been
the disposition of hegemonic art history: to emphasize
connections compatible with the overall aegis of notions of art's
autonomy — even on this most unpromising terrain — and
systematically to disregard theoretical, ideological, political
orders of relation. As such, this is more a problem of Western
art history and its institutional-political conjuncture than
anything to do with the historical terrain it claims to
conjugate.
That there are powerful motivating factors behind the
"severance" thesis does not make it any more robust. What
those factors are can be gleaned from Rakitin's argument. He
needs to play down the avant-garde's relation to revolutionary
politics precisely because of the overarching virtue he attaches
to the avant-garde; and, concomitantly, because of the vice
associated with Sovietization. Thus, the avant-garde is "an
energetic free force"; it requires for its practice "the
participation of free active persons." As such, it is "thoroughly
alien to the Soviet model of life."8 Rakitin does, at least, have
the excuse of being Russian and, therefore, having been
constrained for at least part of his career by the closures of the
Stalinist system. The same cannot be said of "liberal" West
European and American intellectuals whose work remains
within the purview of their own culture's official ideology.
The clear line linking Rakitin and other East European
"severance" theorists to their Western liberal counterparts is
the identification of the Bolshevik Revolution with the
monolithic Soviet system of the Cold War. A simultaneous
attraction to an adventurous abstract art and repulsion from a
totalitarian political system lead to the strategy of divesting
the former of its political commitments. The two most
common variations on this strategy are, first, the displacement
of the sociopolitical impulse to the margins of a practice seen as
primarily determined by formal and technical considerations
that it shares with similar practices elsewhere. And, second,
when that argument becomes too weak to sustain, the notion of
"utopianism." The members of the avant-garde are interpreted
as innocents caught up in the revolutionary turmoil, mistaking
its motivations for their own, and then being badly burned by
the consequences of their mistake once the "real" politicians
managed to divert some of their will-to-power to the sphere of
culture. Neither of these arguments is completely without
foundation: that is precisely what lends them their specious
plausibility and accounts for their longevity in a political-
intellectual conjuncture which wants them to be true. Thus, to
invoke Maiakovskii once again: the reason Maiakovskii offers
for forming Lef is indeed that the political leadership's
attentions are no longer going to be completely absorbed by
the exigencies of War Communism; and the artistic left, as a
consequence, has to organize itself and get its version of the
cultural task inserted properly into the debate which is about
to ensue. This is not in itself "utopian," however; quite the
conttary.
Utopianism is a tesort of histotians who want to ensure
there is absolutely no passage between Kazimir Malevich, for
example, and — let us say — Leonid Brezhnev, as the symbol of
the Soviet order at the moment of production of most cultural-
artistic histories of it. For American historians in particular,
the potency of this system of passages and disjunctions must
have been enhanced by the cultural prestige of the exiled
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his emphatic assimilation of the
Stalinist dystopia to Bolshevism per se — an endemic trait of
liberal thought throughout the period, but given significant
reinforcement by the horse s-mouth effect of the wave of post-
19605 literary dissidents in general and Solzhenitsyn's
American exile in particular. Utopianism itself, it may finally
be noted, has been inflected in two different directions
according to the demands of the account. Thus, either we have
the blissful innocence and otherworldliness of artists whose
very openness and suggestibility lead to their being raped by
the Marxist politicians as soon as they can find the time
(subtext: art should avoid politics, then and now) or, in the case
of those who appear to have persisted in their association of art
with the Revolution, we encounter a construction of willful
naivete, a tempting of fate, a dangerous kind of utopianism
purblind to the true nature of the realpolitik it entertained;
these people are paraded as a lesson on the dangers of playing
with such fire in the first place, for inviting it, as it were, into
the house of art (subtext, of course, the same).
There is probably even today a sense in which this image of
a "protean avant-garde," either innocent of or childishly
infatuated with revolutionary politics and subsequently
crushed by the totalitarian Marxist power which has continued
to disfigure the twentieth century almost to its end, remains
the most widespread view of the Soviet constellation of the
early twenties — with Lenin the ruthless leader whose iron
shadow fell across a generation of free spirits, a generation
whose eccentric vitality has, however, continued to grace
liberal culture even as it was anathematized by Marxism's
pathology of control.
Accounts of that stripe have been hegemonic. A second
broad category emerged, however, to challenge hegemonic
certainties as part of that general contestation trading variously
under the titles of critiques of Modernism, the social history of
art, and the new art history in the later 1970s and the 1980s.
Here for the first time serious investigations not only of the
individual arts but of interconnections among them begin to
appear, tellingly stimulated more by developments in film and
literary theory than in art history per se. The result has been a
range of reconceptualizations away from crudely conventional
assertions of the autonomy of art — though not, it should be
said, thereby away from a necessary focus on the formal.
Needless to say, the orthodox account of the avant-garde's
distinction from politics and this series of radical re-readings
have not evolved neatly, one from the other. Rather, the
contestation between them has effectively constituted the field
during recent times, setting the register within whose compass
our qualitative leap in the understanding of the avant-garde
has taken place. The upshot has been a field transformed out of
all recognition, dedicated most often to re-reading the
extraordinary series of technical radicalizations which
fundamentally constituted the revolutionary avant-garde of the
1920s, revealing that avant-garde as an unparalleled site of the
committed scrutiny and transformation of all the norms of
bourgeois cultural practice. The excavation of the full scope of
the work of Rodchenko, Vertov, Klutsis, Vladimir Tatlin,
Maiakovskii, and Lissitzky, not to mention the related
theoretical perspectives of Osip Brik, Viktor Shklovskii,
Valentin Voloshinov, and others, has achieved that rare thing:
the eruption of the historical work into the practical
conjuncture of the present. It would not be going too far to say
that a culture has been recovered — a culture, moreover, that is
still revolutionary with respect to our own. Nothing has more
vividly thrown into relief the tragic conjunction of the
technically extraordinary and the socially and politically
regressive within our own culture than this revealed
constellation of practices in the fifteen years or so after the
October Revolution.
Despite, or perhaps because of, this concentration, the
relation of this spectrum of work to the October Revolution has
not been the focus of such close scrutiny as the contours of the
work itself. Needless to say, the aforementioned ideologically
motivated sanitizing of the avant-garde has been eclipsed. But
the nature of the avant-garde's revolutionary affiliations has, for
the most part, continued to be read at the level of a general
platform enabling the plethora of technical innovations. That
said, Yve-Alain Bois, for example, has mapped his reading of
Lissitzky 's geometrical investigations back onto a sociopolitical
context.'' At their best, such readings have aspired to conjoin
the semantic and social revolutions of the Soviet avant-garde,
at least as a point of principle. In so doing, they are an effective
counterweight both to depoliticized accounts of avant-garde
art and to orthodox political histories which neglect the
dimension of the social production of meaning.
Lodder's account overturned many assumptions about the
nature of Constructivism, indeed it started from the premise
that "no satisfactory overall account"'0 existed. She was,
nonetheless, able to devote little space to siting that avant-
garde within the revolutionary process. As might have been
expected, the consequence, therefore, was a certain asymmetry
in her account: innovatory analyses of the aims of the avant-
garde and the organization of its institutions, yet reliance upon
conventional assumptions about its context. One of Lodder's
premises was the ultimate failure of Constructivism; a tragic,
even a grand failure, but a failure, nonetheless. This failure is
signaled by a retreat from aspirations to intervene in — even to
"organize" — building the new world, to small-scale
contributions to the spheres of graphic design and theater.
Even the turn to photography in the later twenties is read as an
attempt to claw back some ground from the increasingly
dominant "Realist" painting groups like AKhRR (the
Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia).
The implicit premises here are three, and they are of course
not Lodder's alone but the conventional wisdom. First, "the
Party" and its preference for a Realist art. Second, the grounds
of this preference in Realist art's supposed popularity and
accessibility to the uneducated masses, an accessibility which
cuts both ways — as an expression of the people's unschooled
interests and as a conduit for the Party's preferred messages.
Third, economic scarcity, which underpins this symbiosis
between an authoritarian Party and a conservative people. Thus
the Vkhutemas experiment was "aborted" because of "the
material circumstances in which it operated."" More than that,
the "principal reason" advanced by Lodder for the failure of
Constructivism as a whole is "the material poverty that
dominated all Soviet activity in the 1920s."'2 No adequate
account of Soviet developments in the 1920s could, of course,
avoid the economic aspect. But what tends to be overlooked is
the extent to which economic questions did not arise as "brute"
facts. This may seem alarmingly to underestimate what it is to
lack the equipment to produce goods, or what it is to
experience famine. The point remains, nonetheless, that the
economic dimension is continually implicated in a process of
political direction and decision making. If the economic and
social wreckage of the War Communism period could sustain
the high levels of activity of the revolutionary avant-garde,
there is no specifically economic reason why such activity could
not be sustained later in the decade. The reasons for the
increasing effectiveness of criticism of the erstwhile avant-
garde, ultimately amounting to its marginalization and
suppression, are more complex; and the "failure" is not
Constructivism's alone.
What is at issue is a far wider "failure": the failure of the
October Revolution itself. The failure of Constructivism or,
indeed, of the "left front" of art in general is best regarded as a
symptom of this larger defeat. It is as well to be clear on this
point. In both the foregoing accounts of the avant-garde —
explicitly in the depoliticized version and at least implicitly in
the qualitatively more sophisticated account wherein the
avant-garde is powerfully determined by the Revolution — the
tendency is, at bottom, to view the avant-garde as victim of the
Revolution's success. The implication is that the avant-garde
found a space to operate in the heady days immediately
following the Revolution, when a mixture of euphoria, chaos,
and the leadership's preoccupation with other matters offered a
loophole. Seizing its opportunity, the avant-garde became
briefly dominant. Once the revolutionary ship was stabilized,
however, the authoritarian Party showed its true colors and, as
part of the drive to extend its control, suppressed the avant-
garde. The realpolitik of building up an industrial base in a
backward country meant that the avant-garde became, at best,
a sort of luxury when there was no provision for luxuries and,
at worst, a vestige of prerevolutionary bourgeois culture which
had to be extirpated from the nascent workers' state. It must be
said that, once again, there are elements of truth in this
explanation: there was suspicion of the avant-garde's bourgeois
antecedents, and so forth. But the cumulative effect of such
accounts, despite their moments of truth, is misleading —
skewed by an interpretation of the Revolution which, it is
increasingly evident, is itself an ideological construct. What
gives this construct its force is, of course, that it has
constituted the ideology of both competing world-power blocs.
For equal and opposite reasons, the bureaucratic monolith in
the USSR and the liberal-capitalist democracies in the West
have sought to underwrite a continuity between the October
Revolution and the state system that succeeded it. To develop
this point here would be to get ahead of the story; suffice to say
at present that the three constituents of the avant-garde's
failure, as offered even in "revisionist" accounts — the
monolithic Party, the backward people, and economic dearth —
are themselves in need of considerable investigation and
revision.
Even Benjamin Buchloh's compelling account of the avant-
garde's evolution "from fakt//ra to factography" betrays
elements of this questionable perspective — though his
argument is somewhat the reverse of Lodder's." Whib for
Lodder economic scarcity set the agenda, Buchloh, if anything,
overestimates the extent to which it had been conquered, yet in
so doing demonstrates fundamentally the same perception of
the Revolution's aims. One of the virtues of Buchloh's account
is that it acknowledges the self-consciousness of the
Constructivists' transformation out of a bourgeois avant-garde
art group in the changed conditions post-October;
furthermore, this transformation is treated in terms of a focus
upon the audience for their work. That is to say, the
revolutionary self-transformation of the avant-garde is not
treated as merely the result of some internal dynamic but
conclusively presented as determined by a sense of its task:
whom it is addressing, and what has to be done to consolidate
and encourage that new constituency. It is here, however, that
Buchloh seems to go astray. The basic problem is a repeated
overemphasis on industrialization as if this were an achieved
condition from the moment of the Revolution. Thus, in a
passage clearly referring to the immediate postrevolutionary
situation of War Communism (when Lissitzky displayed his
Suprematist hoarding Stank: depo fabrik zavodov zhdut vas
[The Factory Benches Await You, 1919-20] outside a factory in
Vitebsk), Buchloh speaks of "the new audiences of
industrialized urban society in the Soviet Union." Ironically,
postrevolutionary society was in the process of becoming
considerably less industrialized than it had been even under
czarism as production was wrecked and the working class itself
bled dry by the Civil War. Elsewhere, this time in a discussion
of the NEP (New Economic Policy) period, and specifically of
avant-garde responses to the reassertion of tradition under
NEP, Buchloh refers to an art production addressing "the needs
of a newly industrialized collective society" — this at a time
when Russian society, as a matter of policy, was neither ,
industrialized nor collective. Factography as it developed in the
late 1920s certainly took place in an atmosphere when
industrialization, ultimately in the shape of the First Five- Year
Plan, came on the agenda. Yet it did not become enshrined as
an absolute until 1928 or even 1929. Thus, in a discussion of
jaktura (density) during the so-called "laboratory period," circa
1918-21, Buchloh's reference to "the introduction of
industrialization and social engineering that was imminent in
the Soviet Union after the revolution of 1917" certainly seems
premature. That industrialization of a certain type — not of the
sort which actually came about at the end of the decade — may
have been required by Constructivism merely underlines the
significance of such a gap between requirement and reality.
There are two possibilities here. One is that Buchloh's
wider history is insufficiently differentiated, but of no
consequence because it doesn't affect his account of
developments within the avant-garde. The other is that a
tendency to misread the productive context does indeed have
some bearing on an explanation of artistic developments
which, after all, sets out with the intention of situating them
in a dialectic with society and production rather than treating
the latter as a passive backdrop to the art. It is this second
possibility which I shall go on to explore below. But first, this
schematic survey of characterizations of the sociopolitical
alignments of the avant-garde requires completion.
Just as the "severance" thesis of liberal dominance came to
be challenged by revisionist accounts which for the first time
revealed the extent of the avant-garde's project of participation
in the revolutionary process of building the new society, so
recently there is evidence that a third kind of account is
emerging. This is not so surprising as it might seem. Both of
the foregoing accounts have themselves emanated from an
academic-institutional conjuncture overdetermined by the
conditions of the postwar settlement: the division of the world
into two superpower blocs. In terms of a structural logic, if not
always of strict chronology, it may be possible to ascribe the
"severance" and "revisionist" accounts to distinct moments in
that period: in brief, to pre- and post-1968. The reemergence of
a second Cold War during the Reagan/Thatcher/Brezhnev
period tended to give renewed emphasis to perspectives more
at home in the earlier phase, just as it threatened to
marginalize the revisionisms which for a period after the
radicalizations of the late sixties, and during the period of
detente, threatened to become hegemonic at least in the social
sciences and the newly sophisticated cultural studies
departments of Western higher-educational institutions. Since
the mid-1980s, and reaching at least a temporary climax in
1989 (whether this proves to be a plateau before even greater
upheavals remains to be seen), this map has been redrawn. A
condition which appeared to be — or perhaps more accurately,
felt as if it were — permanent, has dissolved into history; and
official talk, at least, is of a "new world order." One of the main
accompaniments to the sound of the Berlin Wall coming down
has been the clatter of intellectuals of a variety of persuasions
typing out the obituaries of socialism/Communism/Marxism.
One of the darkest stars in this dubious intellectual
constellation has been Francis Fukuyama's thesis of the end of
history, a kind of right-wing Postmodernism in its evocation of
a boring future in which the grand narratives of emancipation
have expired, but a thesis which nonetheless offered a rerun of
Daniel Bell's "end of ideology" claim from the 1950s.'4 The
affirmative side of Fukuyama's elision of Marx, Lenin, Stalin,
and the socialist tradition tout court was an assertion of the
permanent realization of liberalism. In fact, the "end of
history" consisted specifically in wall-to-wall liberalism, albeit
of a conservative, State Department hue. The foundations of
Fukuyama's thesis have, since its publication, been subject to
criticism, and in the wake of the Persian Gulf War skepticism
has accrued mightily about the credentials of George Bush's
"new world order." Notwithstanding this, however, the
Fukuyama argument is an indication of the new lease on life
which the rhetorical death of Marxism et cetera has given to
voices which want nothing to do with revolution — neither
English nor French nor, of course, Russian; nor, one might add,
cultural.
A side effect of the collapse of the Soviet empire in the field
of cultural history has been the opening up of a hitherto largely
dormant field: the culture of the Stalin period. Much of this
work promises, of course, to be of exceptional value, as it
brings to light the complexities of that which has heretofore
been written off, for the most part, as the ossified Other of
Modernism, unworthy of scholarly investigation, the creature
of a totalitarian bureaucracy with no compact or articulated
identity — no history — of its own. One contested area which
this development places on the agenda, however, is the
relationship of the avant-garde of the 1920s to the official art of
the Stalin era. The traditional option of a pristine, apolitical
avant-garde subordinated to a totalitarian political agenda
having been somewhat abrogated by those revisionist histories
which revealed the extent of the avant-garde's politicization,
the question now poses itself the more starkly: what is the
relationship of those politics to the politics of Socialist Realism
and Stalinism?
One of the key issues here, which falls beyond the scope of
the present essay, concerns the political perspective of
revisionist-left histories themselves. Suffice to say that for the
majority of the left, Stalinism has presented a major
ideological, as well as a moral and political, problem. The
glaring discrepancy between conceptions of a "presently
existing socialism" — positively or negatively inflected
according to the author's devotion to the Communist Party
tradition — and the realities of the bureaucratic nightmare that
Stalinism actually was, coupled with the fact that the
bureaucracy systematically denied access to all kinds of
information about its own constitution and history, ensured
that the question of Stalinist culture did not get addressed.
The demise of that system, combined with the renewed
boldness of the ideological wing of the apparently victorious,
economically liberal/politically conservative capitalist
formation in what E. P. Thompson once called the
"Natopolitan" countries, has given a new lease on life to
denunciations of Stalinism, while reducing any need to be
scrupulous in depicting its antecedents. When even the
Western < >mmunist parties are competing to distance
themselves from the October Revolution (and the legacy they
themselves have systematically misconstrued), what historian
of art is ; to be in a position to be able — let alone to
want- o the occluded byways of Russian politics in
the 1920s? That sense of a loosening of restraint, albeit often
for negative reasons, on the scrutiny of Stalinism, plus the fact
that a great quantity of historical data on the Stalin era is only
now becoming available, means that the question passed over
in silence by those histories which gave back to the avant-garde
its political dimension is now close to the center of concern.
Moreover, the contours of an answer are being provided, too.
To borrow a term from media studies, our situation on the
threshold of a "new world order" offers a preferred reading of
that order's defeated opponents. If "severance" was one motif
for the avant-garde's relation to politics, a motif redrawn as
cohabitation by left-revisionist histories, the new
neoconservative perspective can be given in one word:
complicity.
Not all such accounts are, of course, of a piece; this "map" is
only schematic, and the epithet "neoconservative" may not
always be wholly justified. Thus, to take only two authors:
Boris Groys in a stimulating and suggestive argument treats
Socialist Realism as a sui generis cultural formation, whereas
Igor Golomstock in a palpably rebarbative text is concerned to
reduce it to the status of merely one manifestation of a
"totalitarian art" that also includes the products of Italian
Fascism and German Nazism." Both, however, in a diametric
reversal of arguments for the political innocence of the avant-
garde, are concerned to draw connections between it and the
ostensibly very different art of Socialist Realism.
Golomstock's case involves more than a hint of guilt by
association. In an ironically symmetrical replay — of all
things — of Georg Lukacs's denunciation of the Expressionist
avant-garde for weakening the resistance of the bourgeois
humanist tradition to Fascism, Golomstock despairs of the
avant-garde for smoothing the path of totalitarianism. It
should be said that this is not Golomstock's main focus —
which consists in the claimed isomorphism of Stalinist and
Nazi art. But a central plank of such a claim is the assertion of
continuity between the Bolshevik Revolution and the Stalinist
bureaucracy. As his teleological argument has it: "a totalitarian
regime disguises itself in revolutionary garb during its first
stage of development." In line with this political claim, a
"continuity" thesis is asserted in art. The committed wing of
the left avant-garde — Tatlin, Rodchenko, Klutsis, Lissitzky —
become totalitarians in nuce. "Many features" of the avant-
garde's artistic ideology "were later incorporated into the
foundations of totalitarian art." Citations from 1920s avant-
gardists are deployed to prove that "the first calls for the strict
administration and central administration of the arts" came
from "the revolutionary avant-garde themselves," and thence
that the avant-garde "first elaborated a totalitarian ideology of
culture." The slippage in the argument is notable. In fact,
Golomstock inserts a disclaimer in his argument to the effect
that it would be wrong to overstate the avant-garde's
responsibility for totalitarian art, since that is just what
Socialist Realist theoreticians themselves claimed about the
avant-garde vis-a-vis Nazism, as part of establishing their own
distance from it. The disclaimer does, however, ring somewhat
tokenistically in the face of the multiplicity of claims to the
effect that it would be "illegitimate, however, entirely to deny
the role of the avant-garde in the formation of the totalitarian
artistic ideology." A supposedly conventional antithesis (our
first, "hegemonic" interpretation above) is invoked wherein
"these two decades [i.e., the 1920s and 1930s] appear to be
antagonistic epochs" according to a list of binary oppositions:
"freedom and slavery, dynamism and stasis, development and
stagnation, etc." By thus absolutizing the supposed
"oppositions," it becomes easier to take a "realistic" step back
and claim a "hereditary link" between the revolutionary avant-
garde and the Stalinist apologetics of Socialist Realism.
The thrust of this argument in Golomstock's case is clearly
grounded in a valorization of Western liberal democracy — not
surprising, since he is in voluntary exile after a blighted career
within the Stalinist system. The point is not so much to
question the allegiances imposed by a trammeled biography as
to note that in the present conjuncture of its publication,
Golomstock's thesis dovetails with the wider triumphalism of
Western official readings of the revolutions of 1989. In this
connection, there is, in fact, an explicit sense in which the
historical continuity thesis is offered as a dire warning to
contemporary artists who evince a renewed openness to art's
sociopolitical dimension. Artists inclined to a critique of
Modernism may be tempted by a "nostalgia" for "art's lost
social role" to "flirt, albeit unconsciously, with totalitarian
aesthetics."
Groys's argument differs from Golomstock's in its view of
Socialist Realism as a specific formation, as well as in its
acknowledgment of the paradoxical defeat of the avant-garde's
intentions to transcend bourgeois art practice, which the
contemporary interest of art museums and historians
represents. Nonetheless, apropos the present argument
concerning the politics of the avant-garde, he repeatedly asserts
Socialist Realism's "identity with the avant-garde era," the
"unity of their fundamental artistic aim." Despite appearances,
Socialist Realism "put into effect practically all the
fundamental watchwords of the avant-garde." Although it
moved away from the avant-garde stylistically, "at the same
time it continued, developed and in a certain sense, even
implemented its programme." Clearly, these arguments require
careful consideration. Outrageous as they might seem at first
glance to sensibilities nurtured on the alleged otherworldliness
of a Malevich, let alone the straightforwardly anti-Soviet
credentials of a Gabo, there is once more a grain, though not a
kernel, of truth to them. The issue revolves, of course, precisely
around the Soviet avant-garde's self-transformation out of a
Modernist-type embrace of the autonomy of art rooted in the
narrowing of art to the realm of the aesthetic (where the
aesthetic is understood in terms of a conception of the
expression of emotion and concomitant distance from the
cognitive or critical). It is this basic fact of an art being
conceived in terms of a social rather than a purely aesthetic
task which engenders the desire to curtail its emancipatory
aura by reining it in as a precursor of Socialist Realism. Thus,
Bois wants, rightly, to claim of Lissitzky's prouns that they are
"abstract models of radical freedom."'" Any such identification
is clearly disrupted by an argument which postulates a one-way
street from the avant-garde to the subservient, sometimes
brutal, always formulaic art of the bureaucratic system.
Groys's key phrase is that Socialist Realism constitutes the
"continuation of the Russian avant-garde's strategy by other
means." The whole issue, by which I mean the thesis of
continuity between the avant-garde and Socialist Realism and
between the Bolshevik Revolution and Stalinism, centers on
the constitution of "means" and "ends." For Groys, the
"means" are, on the one hand, a highly idealized form of
figurative painting and, on the other, a rhetoric of materialism.
His claim is that the end which the avant-garde and Socialist
Realism shared was the aspiration to change people's nature:
either through a kind of narrative persuasion or by directly
intervening in and changing their environments. Such a
comparison is, it must be said, smoothed somewhat by the
invocation of hyper-Productivists like Boris Arvatov. The
wilder reaches of Soviet Taylorism, as represented by such as
Arvatov, Boris Kushner, and Aleksei Gastev, are, it must be
conceded, terrifying. They are not, however, truly
representative of the left front of the arts as a whole. It is more
than a little disingenuous to use them as a stick with which to
beat the avant-garde in general. But the question of shared
"ends" runs deeper than this, and care is required.
The basic disposition to change people's habits, even the
revolutionary desire to bring about a new kind of person living
a new kind of life free from oppression and exploitation is, as it
stands, too vague to legitimate the assimilation of the
revolutionary avant-garde of the 1920s to the official state art of
the 1930s. The question is, rather, whether their conceptions of
a "new way of life," of "socialist man," and so forth, are the
same. Equally important is whether the philosophical positions
stood in the same relation to actual policies, insofar as the
question of "ends" has two aspects: what they said and what
they did. The main issue, nonetheless, is whether the ends of
the October Revolution can be said to be the same as the ends
of the Stalinist system of the thirties and after. Before debating
the historical point, it is worth underlining that, for Groys,
they are. In one particularly outspoken instance they are de
facto identified: "... the October Revolution and its slogan of
the total reconstruction of the country according to a single
plan." There is obviously an overlap here with the arguments of
Buchloh noted earlier. And once again the assumption is
mistaken. The Bolshevik intention was not, initially, to build
up an industrial planned economy in the national Russian
state. It was to stimulate, to act as a bridgehead for, revolution
in the already industrialized Western nations. Lenin repeatedly
argued that "without such a revolution we are lost," and even
that "the final victory of socialism in a single country is of
course impossible."'" Moreover, he also judged that when the
international revolution did occur, its Russian component
would retreat to the the second rank, only then slowly building
itself up on the basis of aid from the developed countries. It
was in complete opposition to this view — which is to say, the
view of Lenin, Lev Trotskii, and the Bolshevik Party as a
whole — that Stalin, as Carr has pointed out, as early as 1918
voiced skepticism about the international dimension of the
Revolution and viewed it in a primarily Russian national
context.'8 Thus, the effect of that one sentence in Groys's
history is to collapse the international-socialist Bolshevik
October into the Stalinist doctrine of "socialism in one
country" and its achievement through the Five- Year Plans. It is
worth noting that even this latter is an elision of no small
order: the doctrine of "socialism in one country" in fact
preceded the adoption of the First Five-Year Plan by the better
part of five years and, indeed, was initially promulgated in the
conditions of the New Economic Policy in 1924 — the very
social system which the Five-Year Plan overthrew.
The twin assimilation — of October to the Monolith, of Lef
to Socialist Realism — receives a particular fillip from an
observation made by both Groys and Golomstock. One of the
most Orwellian encapsulations of the task of the Socialist
Realist artist is that offered at the First Congress of Soviet
Writers in 1934 by Andrei Zhdanov, quoting Stalin himself:
writers were to be "engineers of human souls." This almost
oxymoronic formulation produces a chilling effect and has
come to stand as the hallmark of Stalinism's inhumanity and
indifference to the individual. Both Groys and Golomstock
argue for a continuity between the Constructivist project and
this Stalinist conception of the artist. In Groys's case, the claim
is rooted in a general invocation of the avant-garde concept of
the "artist-engineer." His argument is that the Utopian and
unrealizable disposition of artists actually to shape the material
form of the environment is nothing less than that which was
taken over by Stalin and his cohorts — so that artists could now
focus on the more manageable task of mind-fixing. What made
the avant-garde's project "utopian" was that artists exceeded
their brief by aspiring to affect the "base," an ambition
Socialist Realism redressed by its focus on the "superstructure."
This is held to be its realpolitik. Golomstock's argument is
essentially the same, except that he musters a quotation:
Sergei Tret'iakov's image from the first issue of Lef(Left Front
of the Arts), which Golomstock translates as "psycho-engineer."
Tret'iakov's subsequent fate in one of Stalin's prison camps thus
becomes a heightened instance of the avant-garde being
devoured by the Frankenstein it helped to create, and by
implication a grisly warning to any and all who find
themselves attracted to the role of the "engaged artist."
The avant-garde notion of the engineer or constructor was
part of an attempt to realign the practice of art with the
business of socialist construction and to distance it from
mysticism. As such, it partook of the central historical-
materialist tenet that "social consciousness" is determined by
"social being." To conflate this with the Stalinist panoply of
repression and, by inference, with its well-known corruption of
psychiatry in the treatment of dissidents owes more to Cold
War ideology than to history. I would be naive to claim that
there were no points of contact among the avant-garde, the
Revolution, and Stalinism. But how such a relation is
conceived matters greatly. In marked contrast to the foregoing,
Victor Serge wrote: "It is often said that 'the germ of all
Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning'. Well, I have no
objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other
germs — a mass of other germs — and those who lived through
the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious
revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by
the death germs which the autopsy reveals in a corpse — and
which he may have carried with him since his birth — is this
very sensible?"'9
Distinct, on the one hand, from traditional claims of the
Soviet avant-garde's relative political "innocence," and quite
unequivocally dismissive, on the other, of any virtue attaching
to its commitment to revolutionary politics, these arguments
add a new dimension to the political meanings ascribed to the
avant-garde. Coming when they do, they in a powerful sense
complete the continuity thesis about Bolshevism and
Stalinism. Long the staple of Western ideologists, this claim
has often seemed to find its most vivid and persuasive rejoinder
in the transformative elan of the revolutionary avant-garde.
The effect of these interpretations, in the climate of the "new
world order," is to close off that loophole in liberal-conservative
ideology for good.
II
The foregoing survey of existing interpretations of the politics
of the postrevolutionary Soviet avant-garde, cursory and
schematic though it has been, reveals a deficiency. Only
accounts in the second broad category (which I have dubbed
the "revisionist" histories, in order to distinguish them both
from the previously dominant sanitized or apologetic
constructions of an apolitical art movement and from the
recently emergent, conservatively inflected histories which play
upon a claimed complicity with Stalinism as part of a wider
project of burying affirmations of social revolution, the
collective, and planning) — only these offer an adequate account
of the institutions, debates, and formal and technical strategies
of the avant-garde. "Only" is, of course, a relative term here.
Such accounts have formed the central ground of interpretation
of the avant-garde in recent years. But now that the situation
in Russia has changed so fundamentally, there is no guarantee
that this will remain the case. The identification of the
Stalinist system with socialism has been so prevalent that the
system's fall can, and perhaps will, contribute more readily to
the displacement of social radicalism from the academic agenda
than to the regeneration of such concern, which, in more
propitious circumstances, the removal of one of its main
obstacles might have permitted. Even those otherwise fruitful
"revisionist" accounts, however, have not, on the whole, tended
to place avant-garde developments securely within the wider
context of debate and struggle which, in the 1920s, was the
process of sustaining the Revolution and building the new life.
On the other side, it goes almost without saying, the orthodox
political histories have, for their part, devoted scant, if any,
attention to artistic debates.20 An obvious question arises,
therefore. Is it possible, at present, to offer a more positive
interpretation of the politics of the avant-garde which may
situate it in a nuanced account of the postrevolutionary
political process: more nuanced, that is, than a conception
which, for all its detail, tends to see the Revolution as a species
of natural force, an eruption whose lava flows into a variety of
distinct spheres, only to harden into Stalin's iron realpolitik —
another "natural" outcome of revolution in a backward country.
There is no small paradox in the readiness of liberal
historians to ascribe a kind of determinism to
postrevolutionary political history, as though a hardening of
the arteries was the only possible outcome for the Revolution.
Yet the 1920s in fact witnessed a contested political process the
outcome of which was not certain. It has been argued that one
reason why Trotskii failed adequately to oppose Stalin at the
Twelfth Party Congress in 1923, when the latter's power was far
from established, let alone consolidated, was that Trotskii
simply could not bring himself to take Stalin's threat to his
own status and the gains of the Revolution seriously: "No
contemporary, and he [Trotskii] least of all, saw in the Stalin of
1923 the menacing and towering figure he was to become."2' If
so, the miscalculation itself is dramatic enough. But what it
indicates, more generally, is that Staling as a system
represented a position won from the defeat of other
perspectives. Russia in the 1920s witnessed a continuing
struggle over the balance of forces, economic, political, and
cultural — a struggle intensified by the uncertainties of the
international situation — rather than a royal road to the cult of
personality.
When speaking of the politics of the avant-garde, it is
fundamental to retain this sense of a political process. For the
greater part of the period, however, there were no forces that
resembled political parties in the contemporary Western sense.
The Mensheviks and Right SRs (Social Revolutionaries),
having been banned in June 1918 for association with
"notorious counterrevolutionaries," had been rehabilitated later
that year and early in 1919 and continued to exist throughout
the Civil War, though their support eroded and both were
effectively harried out of existence by the war's end. This
coincided with the banning of organized fractions within the
Party at the Tenth Congress in 1921. The situation at this point
was grave: the war economy had extended a kind of military
discipline over the whole of society, which was now in a
pulverized condition; the Kronshtadt revolt had just been put
down, at terrible cost; and massive controversy over the
adoption of the New Economic Policy was threatening to tear
the congress apart. Carr comments that the General Resolution
on the Unity of the Party "seemed necessary and reasonable at
the time."22 Nonetheless, this decision came back to haunt the
opposition to Stalin during the twenties, the problem being
that the very organization of oppositional forces — even if in the
cause of democratization — broke the rules and could be
claimed, therefore, to violate Soviet democracy. The political
process which took place, consequently, comprised more or less
illegitimate formations, always subordinate to the state power,
and increasingly so as power was concentrated further under
the control of the centralized apparatus. This is not to say,
however, that these formations were ipso facto marginal, or
sectarian, let alone counterrevolutionary. Far from it: the main
oppositional grouping's central claim was defense of the legacy
of October against increasing deviations and retreats.
Given this state of affairs, one is extremely unlikely to find
in the historical record evidence of artists' explicit political
commitments in any party or neoparty sense. In fact, any such
commitments are, with the exception of a few general
references to the Communist Party itself, as rare as they are in
the documents of the Western avant-garde. This is presumably
the origin, and one reason for the longevity, of claims for the
apolitical nature of the Soviet avant-garde: one will search in
vain for discussion of the political programs of Nikolai
Bukharin or Trotskii, or indeed for extended discussion of
specific political doctrines such as "socialism in one country" or
even the Five- Year Plans (which do, of course, receive mention,
but at most as/aits accomplis rather than as specific political
strategies). It may be useful in this regard to distinguish
between a relatively organizational sense of politics and a more
diffuse sense of political ideology. For if there is an absence of
political commitment in the former sense, the record is
saturated with examples of it in the latter.
The major artists and theorists without exception place
their formal and technical innovations squarely on the basis of
the sociopolitical achievement of the October Revolution.
Undoubtedly, most of these figures developed their
characteristic technical innovations in the period before the
Revolution. From 1912 onward, however, with the Lena
goldfield massacre, that period was in some respect itself one of
rising political militancy — which contributed to the cultural
climate. But more to the point, October gave these artistic
developments a political focus and in so doing further
transformed them. The result was a specific conjunction, a
union even, of the formal and the political: an avant-garde
practically transformed by a wider social revolution. ;1 Such a
conjunction was sustainable only as long as the Revolution
itself and its own subsequent existence and prospects bore the
marks of the wider restrictions and redefinitions undergone.
The salient feature of the Bolshevik Revolution, in a word,
was that it was extraordinary. It is arguable that the 1920s in
Russia marked a particularly hideous form — or rather forms,
for there were distinct stages — of normalization. It may be
objected that there was nothing "normal" about forced
collectivization and mass famine. But two things should be
remembered. First, collectivization and the parallel
industrialization program of the later decade were not the first
response of the Soviet government to the need to rebuild the
country. And second, however concentrated their particular
form in Russia, increasing state interventions in the economy
came to constitute the norm for all developed nations in the
capitalist crisis of the 1930s: in Germany, Italy, and Japan,
obviously, but also in the United States and Great Britain,
levels of intervention both domestically and in international
trade reached new heights. In the end, the building up of a
national economy with its own industrial base was normal in a
way that breaking the weakest link in the chain of
international capitalism and proceeding to use that bridgehead
to stimulate breaks elsewhere, was not.
The two emblematic works of revolutionary art belong to a
period when commitment to the revolution was able to be, so
to speak, homogeneous. Tatlin's model for the Pamiatnik
Ill-emu Internatsionalu {Monument to the Third International,
1919—20, fig. no. 1) and Lissitzky's Klinom krasnym bei belykh
{Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1920, plate no. 138) both
emanate from circumstances which, if scarcely constituting a
"glorious dawn," nonetheless were self-consciously heroic. For
Blok, events were epochal on a scale transcending even that of
the French Revolution, and bore comparison only with the very
beginnings of our tradition — which is to say, the start of the
Christian era.
One of these emblematic works is three-dimensional, the
other two-dimensional; both, however, transgressed their
framing norms, of sculpture and of painting, respectively: one
moved from constructed reliefs in the direction of architecture,
the other from Suprematist painting in the direction of mass-
produced posters. Both construct their primary message — of
commitment to the all-transforming international socialist
revolution — through an equivalent transformation of norms at
the levels of perception and technique. It is this attempted
integration on which their emblematic status depends as on
nothing else, transcending the failure of either properly to be
realized. They were, in fact, perhaps unrealizable. It is what
one might call their materialistic idealism, emanating from a
situation where the Utopian seemed to be ingrained in
reality — where heaven seemed to roll up like parchment, as
Shklovskii wrote — that confers the resilience they have shown
as images of twentieth-century revolution, that connotes so
strongly the positive side of socialism, when so much that has
been claimed in the name of that concept has been brutal and
barren. It is both their success and their failure — and the
marker, perhaps, of a wider success and failure than their
own — that these unrealizable projects stand at the high-water
mark of that union of social and aesthetic transformation
toward which they must have seemed, at the moment of their
making, only a first step. Both were produced in what later
became defined as the "first period": that period of
revolutionary upturn caused by World War I and its aftermath.
It was marked domestically by War Communism and the
struggle to secure the Revolution, and internationally by the
founding of the Third, Communist, International to seize the
moment and promote the extension of the Revolution on a
worldwide basis. These spheres formed the respective contexts
of Tatlin's and Lissitzky's interventions.
Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of these and similar
works, given the general disrepute into which the Revolution
has fallen — as an antidemocratic coup d'etat, for example — is
the unproblematic nature of the avant-garde's commitment to
the October Revolution. Maiakovskii later wrote: "To accept or
not to accept? There was no such problem for me (and other
Moscow futurists). It was my revolution. I went to the
Smolnyi. I did everything that was necessary. Meetings
began."14 The avant-garde's dominance in the cultural field in
these early years was not uncontested, either from within Party
ranks or by Proletkul't (Proletarian Culture) or by more
conservative artists. It did, however, exist, and the slogans
about organization were backed up by action. Tatlin was not
one for overextended rehearsals of intent; his record, however,
speaks for itself. Tatlin's desire for a unified artists'
organization, expressed as early as 1914, could have remained
avant-gardist rhetoric. The Revolution, however, as well as
putting into circulation the slogan of "building the new life,"
offered a variety of ways for doing so. Tatlin, in addition to his
involvement with Izo Narkompros (the Department of Fine
Arts of the People's Commissariat of Enlightenment),
organized the Union of New Tendencies in Art, an umbrella
organization of left artists in Petrograd. This union, the
Academy of Arts, and Ginkhuk (the State Institute of Artistic-
Culture) were the Petrograd equivalents of the avant-garde's
institutional bases and organizations in Moscow, such as
Vkhutemas and the First Working Group of Constructivists of
Inkhuk. This ground is fairly well trodden. But without
overemphasizing the avant-garde's prominence — which then
tends to cause problems in accounting for its later
tribulations — it is worth recognizing the depth of
organizational and institutional, as well as theoretical,
commitment to the practice of building the new life. The
conditions of War Communism seemed dramatically to draw a
line between the new life and what had gone before.
Conventional forms of class distinction and the bourgeois
individualism connected to them were occluded by the
enforced collectivity of the struggle to sustain the Revolution.
These conditions did not, however, last forever; and it is in
the moves away from them that it becomes possible to speak of
a rather different sense of a politics of the avant-garde. It is
worth underlining, though, the way in which War
Communism framed the project of Constructivism, of
"material culture," and of "art into production." Still more
fundamentally, however, War Communism constitutes the
siting of the whole ethos of a single-minded bending of effort
to one end, of suspicion toward all vestiges of the past —
particularly anything related to a discredited sense of opulence,
which included, of course, aesthetic contemplation, indeed
anything carrying with it the stigma of leisured existence.
Heroization of the Red Army, a total commitment to the
security of the Revolution against the still extant White threat,
and, in consort with those defensive tasks, the positive sense of
a new world to be built from the ground up all militated
against the toleration of revanchism." The greatest single factor
working in favor of the October Revolution was, of course, that
it had been successful; audacity and courage broke through the
hollowed-out protocols of the old. And now War Communism,
apparently against even greater odds, had won again. As such,
it was also a victory for the culture of the avant-garde, which,
alone among the intelligentsia, had supported the Revolution.
To the avant-garde, in the process of thinking its way out of
bourgeois art for art's sake and formal experimentation into an
integrated program for deploying the lessons of that past
toward the building of the Communist future, the message
must have been clear: "Press on." In sum, then, the major
works of the avant-garde's new project of "art into production,"
that which defined both its distance from an art of
contemplation and its commitment to participation in the
wider revolutionary project, were in place by the end of the
Civil War. But War Communism was something very like a
Pyrrhic victory.
The New Economic Policy was adopted in March 1921 at
the Party's historic Tenth Congress. NEP, a government-
promoted reintroduction of capitalism in order to restart the
shattered economy, could not have been more unlike War
Communism. Centralized control of all areas was replaced by
the fostering of private entrepreneurship. The working class,
though numerically small, had been hegemonic in the worker-
peasant alliance that allowed the Bolsheviks to oust the
Provisional Government that had replaced the unlamented
Romanov dynasty in February 1917. After the Civil War, with
not only the bourgeoisie but also the proletariat socially
atomized, the peasantry were the only social class to emerge
relatively intact. NEP was summed up in Bukharin's advice to
the peasantry: "Enrich yourselves." Which is to say, the balance
of forces shifted from planning to that which is nowadays
usually dubbed "enterprise," but for which the terms "greed"
and "self-seeking" often do just as well. The balance shifted
from town to country and from proletarians not just to
peasants but to the "Nepmen," the new entrepreneurial class of
merchants and middlemen which NEP brought into being — or
rather, released from the amber into which they had been set
by October and War Communism. NEP society was the
dominant social formation in the Soviet Union in the mid-
1920s, unlike both the heroic revolutionary period which
preceded it and the increasing centralization of the Five-Year
Plans which followed. In fact, it was out of the political
contestation, the victories and defeats of NEP, that the Five-
Year Plans were born. It has been convincingly argued, for
example, by Michael Reiman, that what one might call the
culture of the Five-Year Plans, rudimentary at first but
growing in scope, was an ad hoc response to the eventual crisis
of NEP, rather than the result of any long-term strategy, let
alone a logical or predetermined outcome of the Revolution
itself.26 By 1927-28, the Revolution was, in any case, pretty
much ancient history, there to be deployed behind whichever
group was powerful enough to annex it and its prestige to its
own particular program. From 1921 to about 1928, the
conditions of NEP, not the crucible of War Communism in
which it had been formed, were the operating conditions of the
erstwhile avant-garde.
The attitude of the avant-garde toward NEP is, therefore, a
matter of some importance to clarifying its politics. And,
indeed, in a scattered but relatively consistent commentary, a
position emerges. This is partly born of antipathy to a way of
life in which, as Serge noted, "classes are growing up around us
again." Thus Vertov, writing in 1926: "We have not come to
cinema in order to feed fairy tales to the Nepman and
Nepwoman lounging in the loges of our first-class movie
theaters."27 This was no fantasy. It finds corroboration in the
diary kept by Walter Benjamin of his trip to Moscow. On a
visit to the theater in December 1926, he notes, "a waft of
perfume greeted me as I entered," and he continues: "I did not
see a single communist in a blue tunic, but there were several
types who would not have been out of place in any of George
Grosz's albums."28 This situation points to a second strand in
the avant-garde's response to NEP. For it was the emergence of
these new social layers and their considerable emphasis upon
consumption that provided one important basis for the
reinflation of those traditional approaches to art-making and
the social role of art which had been eclipsed in the
revolutionary period. The avant-garde was opposed both to
NEP's reemergent social stratification and to the opening this
afforded to more conservative types of cultural practice.
It is a commonplace of art history that the avant-garde was
unpopular due to the "innate visual conservatism" of the
population at large.29 Avant-garde commentators themselves,
however, offer a description of a more contested site. Stepanova
said that photomontage was popular in workplaces and
offices.'0 Brik, while he acknowledged the difficulties
experienced by the Constructivists, implied a distinction
between the relationship of the new techniques to workers'
experience in production and the antipathy of the NEP
bourgeoisie, with its preference for conventional notions of art
as a luxury good." More explicitly, Vertov remarked upon the
new lease on life given to fictional films that "recall the old
'artistic' models just as Nepmen recall the old bourgeoisie."'2
At the same time, however, he also discerned a response along
class lines, noting how Kino-pravda {Cinema-Truth) newsreels
"are boycotted by film distributors, by the bourgeois and
semibourgeois public" yet "shown daily in many workers' clubs
in Moscow and the provinces with great success";" and he went
on devastatingly to turn the tables on the new societal
"normalization": "If the NEP audience prefers 'love' or 'crime'
dramas that doesn't mean that our works are unfit. It means
the public is." Fit or unfit for what, is the question; and it has
only to be raised for the answer to be -clear: it was the project of
building a new collective society that was foundering under
NEP conditions. As Shklovskii put it: "The great passion of
Lef . . . was a desire to participate in the making of a new
life."'4 Yet Serge repeatedly notes how under NEP "symptoms
of bourgeoisification" became prevalent, how "money
lubricated and befouled the entire machine just as under
capitalism," how "by and large, order was returning"'5 — and
whom this suited.
Vertov's advertising films for Mossel'prom (the Moscow
10
Agricultural Industry) and GUM, the state department store,
were echoed in the mid-i920s by the various advertising and
packaging projects undertaken by Rodchenko and
Maiakovskii. In the light of our own sleek consumer economy,
these frequently appear no more than quaint, yet in the context
of NEP it is a serious point that Rodchenko, Maiakovskii, and
Vertov were committing their expertise to the state sector.
There were degrees of emphasis: Vertov, as remarked above,
condemned crime films, while Rodchenko successfully
designed covers for Marietta Shaginian's "Jim Dollar" detective
stories. But this does little more than indicate that there was
room for diversity within an overall avant-garde commitment
to the legacy of the Revolution and struggle against its
perceived betrayal under NER The evidence is in the state-
sector advertisements, the candy wrappers with little verses
promoting industry, and posters for "social responsibility"
programs such as Rodchenko's Knigi {Books) for a literary drive
in 1925. These are quite distinct from the emphasis on private
enterprise and profit which had gained ground. And, should it
need underlining, a politics was at stake here.
Politics is not simply a matter of committees. In a
revolutionary situation, or during an attempt to sustain a
revolutionary perspective, all social activity contains a political
dimension, and this includes areas which bourgeois culture
fences off as the province of private taste — as, paradigmatically,
areas of freedom from politics. In 1936, one of the first things
George Orwell noticed when he arrived in revolutionary
Barcelona was people's clothes. There were virtually "no 'well-
dressed' people at all." Nearly everyone was in "rough
working-class clothes."'6 Though it has obviously on occasion
been a signifier of political meaning, clothing, at least in this
practical sense, has not normally been perceived as a site of
political meaning, at least not until very recently. Yet in 1924
Tatlin produced his famous designs for a stove, a coat, and a
suit. These are frequently treated as eccentricities, without a
hope of going into production, at best an index of utopianism
and, as such, evidence of the head-in-the-clouds mentality of
"impractical" artists, whatever their Productivist rhetoric. Such
an explanation is normative with respect to a cultural division
of labor. The situation can, however, be read differently, as
intentionally disruptive of such norms — a possibility which
the orthodox assumption closes down. Tatlin and his colleagues
did attempt to form working relations with organizations for
the mass production of goods and textiles, but were generally
unsuccessful. Larissa Zhadova quotes a contemporary observer,
K. Miklashevski, to the effect that Tatlin, in a lecture,
"expressed his dissatisfaction with authorities who did not
really support his endeavors to work in industrial concerns."'"
This is to say, it was the "authorities" who appeared to frustrate
the artist-constructors in their attempts to turn art into
production, not the sheer impracticality of the projects in the
first place. And these were managers of NEP concerns whom it
behooved to make a profit rather than build a new society. As
Maiakovskii commented in the first issue of Novyi LefiNew
Lef) in 1927: "Market demand has become for many people the
measure of value as far as cultural phenomena are concerned.""'
Serge spoke of the sometimes austere morality of Bolshevism,
the egalitarianism of early Soviet society'9 In like manner, the
historian Selim Khan-Magomedov has noted as one of the key
components of life after the Revolution which framed
Constructivism "a marked asceticism in the habits, clothing,
and official and social life" of the revolutionaries, as distinct
from "the behavior of the social elite that had been reborn with
the NEP"4° Brik noted of Rodchenko's Constructivist design
work that "artists turn their back on him. Irritated factory
managers reject him. The petit-bourgeois goggles . . ."4' Tatlin
produced a montage contrasting his suit with bourgeois lounge
suits, a contrast which is explicitly linked by Zhadova to NEP
conditions. His captions claimed the new clothing "satisfies
hygienic requirements and lasts long," whereas the other is
"unhygienic and they wear it only because they think it is
beautiful."42 The contrast is perhaps a little stark for us. But
what it implies is that Tatlin's is a piece of work less the
product of unworkable eccentricity than of a refusal of NEP
conditions at the level of clothing: a refusal of the reassertion of
a bourgeois, market-fixated mechanism of fashion, and a
determination to design for "this man [who] is a worker and
will use the object in question in the working life he leads."4'
Constructivist interventions in the field of practical design
in the mid-i920s remained on a relatively small scale. There
was perhaps more activity in the fields of theater and graphic
design, but still it fell far short of the aspiration to frame a new
way of life with a "culture of materials" which would
dialectically help to precipitate a new consciousness, new kinds
of social individuals who would themselves go on to live and,
in turn, transform that new life. It is all too easy to see this
failure, from the dubious vantage point of our own monopoly-
capitalist economies, as a result either of the idealism of the
projects themselves or the impatience of those "really" leading
the revolutionary process for such luxuries when more basic
products were required. There is obviously some truth in
this — it has the ring of the way the world works. But the
picture is complicated by the specific nature of the social
formation which replaced War Communism and which gave
renewed breathing space to social stratification and
motivations more often associated with the bourgeois past.
Small wonder that "building the new life" foundered in a
society which powerfully foregrounded the reinstatement of
elements of the old one. Constructivism in these conditions,
trying to push ahead with the sociopolitical transformation put
on the agenda by the October Revolution but subsequently
marginalized by the New Economic Policy, had more the
quality of a rearguard than an avant-garde action.
Benjamin was frequently drawn to comment on the
situation obtaining both in literature and in the society at
large. Only a day or two after his arrival in Moscow in 1926, he
is noting "the political news: members of the opposition
removed from important positions," a situation which he
immediately links to "the Party's reactionary bent in cultural
matters. The leftist movements which had proved useful
during the period of wartime communism are now being
completely discarded."44 The effect of NEP for the
Constructivists was obviously mixed. War Communism had
saved the Revolution, but the militarization of society had
wrecked the revolution's social base. NEP had saved the
economy, and offered a more normal framework of legality for
everyday civilian life, but at the cost of increasing stratification
and the occlusion of the whole vision of a socialist society based
in the working class. In such a situation, then, what was it for
Maiakovskii to write, in 1925, "To build a new culture a clean
sweep is needed. The sweep of the October revolution is
needed"? Certainly, the significance of an appeal to October
during NEP was far from univocal. For Serge's "fat shopkeeper
enriched by the sale at speculative prices of articles
manufactured by our socialist industry" it was time to breathe
a sigh of relief that order was being restored and the dark days
of 1919 put behind for good.41 It is unlikely he would have
apostrophized October's new broom other than to pay lip
service to the origins of a new status quo. It was a different
matter for the avant-garde. In 1923 Nikolai Aseev commented,
"the waves of NEP were already rolling overboard in the
revolutionary ship." One had to "hold onto the balustrades in
order not to be swept into the sea of obscurantism and
philistinism." In particular, "the honesty of those people who
11
were the first artists to have reacted positively to the appeal for
the participation of the intelligentsia in the October revolution
was considered suspect, and their value was constantly
questioned."46
In such a situation, the attempt to press ahead with the
program of "art into production" took on a specific coloring.
Framed in 1921 by Aleksei Gan "in terms of the essential
distinctive features and requirements of communism,"4" when
those "features" were extrapolated from the now abandoned
War Communism, the very sense of "production" which art
was to be directed "into" had undergone significant change. At
the very least, rather than a universal rhetoric, "art into
production" now connoted a specific view, one with its own
history, built out of an acceptance of certain assumptions and a
concomitant rejection of others — which latter were, moreover,
in play as a new status quo at the level both of a market-
oriented economy and an increasingly approved conventional
art practice. Under NEP, that is to say, "art into production"
signified in a system of differences: it was unlike other
assumptions about art and about production. In May 1924,
right in the middle of NEP, Tatlin offered a synoptic statement
of what was still the task in his lecture on "Material Culture
and Its Role in the Production of Life in the USSR": "to shed
light on the tasks of production in our country, and also to
discover the place of the artist-constructor in production, in
relation to improving the quality both of the manufactured
product and of the organization of the new way of life in
general."48 To an extent, of course, all shades of opinion spoke
of the "new way of life," but for the Constructivists in general
and Tatlin in particular this was an assertion of continuity with
October and, indeed, with that prerevolutionary work which
for them prefigured the social and political revolution. It was a
restatement of such a perspective. As Tret'iakov later wrote, Lef
had been formed "in the conditions of the New Economic
Policy . . . Lef means Left Front, and Left Front implies
opposition to any other front."49 Khan-Magomedov has
commented on this period: "Rodchenko's activity in the field
of commercial graphic art was closely bound up with
straightforward political propaganda . . . Many of the book and
magazine covers designed by Rodchenko were really, despite
their small format . . . political posters. "TO The question is,
therefore: is it possible to be any more specific about these
politics?
Dissatisfaction with NEP was not confined to the artistic
avant-garde. That is, in fact, one of the central planks of this
essay. An avant-garde art group in bourgeois society can, of
course, withdraw into a specialized position which does not
have any ready political correlation. That is the nub of claims
for art's relative autonomy from society. It is not, however, to
say that, even then, a politics cannot be legitimately attributed
to such a grouping. In the case of the Soviet Union in the
1920s, however, various factors militate against concluding that
such was the state of affairs. On the one hand, society was
saturated with politics, anyway; on the other, the avant-garde
actually aspired to an interventionist role. Their practice was
not divorced from the political, or at least can be said to have
had compacted into it a political dimension. The latter
dimension is unlikely to have been the group's property alone,
evolved by extrapolation solely from its own art practice or
somehow preserved as a memory trace of the original "big
bang" revolution. There is no reason why it should have been.
The political process evolved, and different perspectives
emerged as time went on. It is relatively improbable that a
small-scale cultural grouping could have maintained a stance
fundamentally at odds with the political order of the day if
that order was otherwise in receipt of homogeneous support. It
is far more likely that, in such a situation, its program would
have been marked by retreats into more orthodox forms of
artistic activity paralleling the wider sociopolitical retreats. It
can, of course, be argued that Constructivism did undergo
significant revision, for example, in the use of uncut
photographs in factography. But this can be seen more as a
modification and adaptation of the program than as a
straightforward retreat from it.
There was, anyway, an approach to art-making which came
very rapidly to be identified with NEP, with the sponsorship of
official bodies such as the trade unions and the army, and the
provision of conventional portraits for the new bourgeoisie
NEP threw up. This was AKhRR. The position of so-called
Realist art in the various groups which sprang up from the end
of the Civil War onward is considerably more complex with
regard to the relations between its form and its content than is
often recognized — even in the case of AKhRR itself, the most
"illusionistic" of the groups, let alone others like Ost (the
Society of Easel Painters), which offered a kind of combination
of avant-garde technique and socially significant depicted
subjects." Be that as it may, the fact remains that throughout
this period AKhRR was at odds with the avant-garde art-into-
production tendency; that it tended to be identified with NEP;
and that the avant-garde did not significantly retreat to more
conventional forms of art practice. This suggests the existence
of a countervailing political-ideological force in the culture
which could enable and sustain distance from the new status
quo.
There were, in fact, two "waves" of such opposition. There
had always been small oppositional groups even during the
Civil War, but, with the exception of the Kronshtadt
mutineers, these had been relatively marginal, and it is
doubtful whether they exerted much gravitational pull.
Circumstances changed, however, as NEP progressed. For some
time, NEP, though apparently reasonably successful in the
fundamental task of making the economy move again, had
begun to generate its own problems. By 1923, largely because
of the concessions to the peasantry, an imbalance arose between
industry and agriculture. Industrial prices remained high
because of the scarcity of manufactured goods. Conversely,
agricultural prices were low, with the result that there was no
incentive for peasants to sell their produce to the cities: they
stood to make little from the transaction and there was not
much in the way of manufactured goods they required to buy,
anyway. Because of this "scissors" crisis, so named due to the
way these divergent tendencies were represented on a graph,
there arose again a serious threat to the worker-peasant alliance
which NEP had been intended to bolster. Lenin was effectively
inactive at this point (and would continue so until his death in
January 1924), and the leadership of NEP fell to the
"triumvirate" of Stalin (the Party Secretary), Grigorii Zinov'ev,
and Lev Kamenev. An alternative proposal to cure the scissors
crisis was put forward by Trotskii in April 1923 at the Twelfth
Party Congress, a proposal which hinged on the concept of
planning. As Isaac Deutscher has pointed out: "That planning
was essential to a socialist economy was a Marxist axiom with
which the Bolsheviks were, of course, familiar, and which they
had always accepted in general terms. Under war communism,
they imagined that they were in a position to establish
immediately a fully-fledged planned economy . . . But after the
introduction of NEP, when all efforts were directed towards
reviving the market economy, the idea of planning suffered
eclipse."" Faced with a retreat from the goal of a planned
socialist mode of production, and with the concomitant decline
in the social power of the working class relative to the
peasantry, Trotskii now reintroduced the idea of "systematically
broadening the scope of planning" with the ultimate aim of
"thereby absorbing and abolishing the market."" Some sense of
12
the stakes involved can be gained from the argument of
Trotskii's later article "K sotsializmu ili k kapitalizmu?"
("Toward Capitalism or Socialism?") of August 1925. NEP is
there seen as both a combination of and a competition between
these two "scissors" tendencies. Trotskii, however, notes that "if
state industry develops more slowly than agriculture; if the
latter should proceed to produce with increasing speed the two
extreme poles [of] capitalist farmers 'above,' proletarians
'below,' this process would of course lead to a restoration of
capitalism."'4
In the cultural field, Tatlin wrote two reports in November
1924 on the work of his Section for Material Culture at the
Petrograd Ginkhuk. That he had to do so, twice, is alone
indicative of the pressure the project was coming under as the
administration sought more biddable recipients for official
funding." But more to the point, Tatlin set his defense of a
planned approach to the design of material culture in a context
of "anarchy" reigning in production. This is, doubtless, in part
an observation about design and production processes and the
lack of headway being made by integrated "Constructivist"
practice. But it also reads as a reflection on the more general
productive conditions obtaining under NEP, and the absence of
planning in the economy. Contemporary production, Tatlin
noted, "in both town and country in all its manifestations,"
largely because of the continuing legacy of "industrial and
domestic production inherited from the old world," was "in a
state of anarchy." Production was "splintered into chance
productive units," and experience as a whole was "abnormally
individualized. "56 This abnormally individual experience of life
and anarchic production process need to be set against the
avant-garde's continued assertion of very different priorities.
Their consistent appeal was to the notion of a "collective" way
of life, a way of life which, moreover, needed to be "organized."
Thus, the course which Rodchenko taught at Vkhutemas was
envisaged in 1926 as producing a "new type of engineer" who
would effect "the organization and rationalization of
production."5" Tatlin likewise viewed his role as that of the
"organizer of everyday life" in an article of 1929. Quite contrary
to these aspirations, daily life under NEP was, as Maiakovskii
described it, a "way of life which has not been altered in almost
any respect — the way of life which is now our worst enemy,
which makes us bourgeois."58 These arguments are consistent
across the decade, yet under NEP, arguments about the need
for organization and planned production would have been
difficult for the Constructivists to sustain without examples of
more concretely theorized programs in the political-economic
sphere. Trotskii's proposals, however, although they came to
constitute the cornerstone of a political program, basically
went unheeded in 1923 by a Party organization which, in
Deutscher's words, "considered NEP almost incompatible with
planning," and thought it necessary instead to emphasize the
"enterprise" economy's stability and longevity in order "to
strengthen the peasants' and the merchants' confidence in it."5'
Other developments were also afoot in the Soviet system.
At the same time as the scissors crisis grew in the economy, the
"blades" moving ever wider apart through the autumn, 1923
also saw the consolidation of the bloc of Party bureaucrats
owing allegiance more to the central power structure than to
the confidence of workers at the base. This led to a
qualitatively new situation: an organization in which
"alignments were temporary blocs around concrete proposals
and issues" was replaced by one of "a permanent power caucus
in the highest body of the party, whose purpose was to preserve
control in its hands regardless of the issues at stake."60 As the
French socialist Boris Souvarine put it, the "dictatorship of the
proletariat" was being replaced by the "dictatorship of the
secretariat." In the summer and autumn of 1923, because of the
mixture of economic pressure and the lack of adequate avenues
of political expression, a wave of industrial militancy struck
Moscow and Petrograd, extending even to the possibility of a
general strike: overall, the most powerful political challenge to
the leadership since Kronshtadt. One result of this changed
situation was the formalization and extension of the position
broached by Trotskii at the Twelfth Congress in the Platform
of the Forty-Six, a statement by a group of leading figures in
the Party which criticized the authorities for their handling of
the economy and the erosion of democracy. October 1923 is
thus usually treated as marking the birth of the Left
Opposition.
The pressure was sufficient, despite the ban on other parties
and on oppositional groups within the Communist Party itself,
to force the leadership to open up a debate in the pages of the
press. The effect was swift, measurable not least by the
doubling of Pravda's circulation. The greatest effect was felt in
the army — which had been Trotskii's base since he reorganized
it to defend the Revolution in 1918 — but the Left Opposition
was also strong in the youth organizations and in the
universities and other higher-educational institutions. Despite
this considerable support for the opposition at the system's
roots, however, the newly functioning bureaucratic apparatus,
which had been in gear since the Party Congress in the spring,
was able to ensure that by the time the Thirteenth Party
Conference came around in January 1924, a support which in
terms of voting at district level was running at thirty-six
percent (and which was possibly even higher in individual
party groups, for which results were not announced) was
converted into a mere three delegates at the conference itself.
By the time of the Thirteenth Congress a few months later, in
May, Trotskii had been effectively isolated — a process which
was then repeated in the international organization at the Fifth
Congress of the Comintern in June.
This very process of reaction does, however, lend a certain
support to the hypothesis of a relationship between the Soviet
avant-garde of the 1920s and the political Left Opposition. In
the wake of the opposition's decline, 1924 witnessed a major
purge of the institutions of higher education. It is well known
that Vkhutemas was one of the major institutional sites of
Constructivism — though, as Lodder has established, the
Constructivist influence was by no means coherent across the
institution as a whole. (It is only recently, in the work of
Lodder and others, that a clear picture of the scope of
Vkhutemas has been offered.) Vkhutemas was not, however, an
isolated institution but part of a system of institutions of
higher education, the VUZy, and in particular of institutions of
higher technical education (the VTUZy).6' The precise
relationship of Vkhutemas, from 1926 reorganized as Vkhutein
(the Higher Artistic-Technical Institute), to the other
institutions of higher technical education is not clear. A
relationship did exist, however, since the original decree by
which Vkhutemas was brought into being concerned its role in
the reorganization and reconstruction of production in the
country at large: a task which was assigned to a wide range of
practical and technical specialisms, not something confined to
the one institution. (A case in point is the Rabfak [the
Workers' Faculty], quite often mentioned in accounts of
Vkhutemas as an avenue whereby workers without previous
qualification could be brought up to a sufficient standard to
allow them to continue with the new art and design education.
Rabfaks, however, were part of a system, attached to all the
VTUZy, not an egalitarian feature of Vkhutemas alone.) It
would be unusual if there were no contact between the
students at such institutions, particularly in a period with a
high profile of ideological and political activity. One obvious
avenue would be through Party meetings, but interaction
13
would also have taken place more informally, not least in
cultural pursuits. Thus in Petrograd in May 1923, Tatlin put on
a memorial performance of Velimir Khlebnikov's play Zangezi.
Supporting actors were largely drawn from the student body,
and Tallin's account mentions, in addition to art students from
the Petrograd Academy, students from the university and the
Mining Institute, one of the VTUZy. These institutions (in
marked contrast to the situation in 1917, it should be noted,
when being a university student was synonymous with support
for the Whites) contained a high proportion of actively
involved Communist students, a "large majority" of whom,
according to Sheila Fitzpatrick, were for the Trotskiist
opposition in 1923-24. 62 In 1924, a surprising ten percent of all
Party members were students, and half of them were in
institutions of higher technical education. In Moscow,
furthermore, students comprised no less than twenty-five
percent of the Moscow Party organization. A student himself is
recorded as having commented: "It was a golden time for the
Trotskyite Opposition."'" With the defeat of the opposition,
however, a tremendous purge took place. Narkompros's own
statistics give the figure of 18,000 students expelled, though
Fitzpatrick argues that the actual numbers were more than
double this. More to the point, most expulsions occurred in
"the more sullied and overcrowded artistic, socio-economic and
pedagogical VTUZy."64 Given the scale of this activity, it seems
highly unlikely that the avant-garde within Vkhutemas, self-
consciously positioned as a "left" within culture at the cutting
edge of a new way of life, and against that life's erosion by the
bourgeoisifying tendencies of NEP — could have remained
isolated from the wider oppositional debate during 1923 and
1924. In fact, far from remaining isolated, it is quite likely to
have drawn support from the left-oriented students,
beleaguered as its adherents apparently felt in the NEP
environment.
Later in 1924, in September, Trotskii's Uroki Oktiabria
{The Lessons of October) was published. His account of the
October Revolution and its legacy was clearly intended to be
relevant to the struggle in 1924. Having remarked that "up to
the present time we lack a single work which gives us a
comprehensive picture of the October upheaval," he
commented: "It is as if we thought that no immediate and
direct benefit for the unpostponable tasks of future
constructive work could be derived from the study of
October."6* He obviously thought otherwise. October could be
used as a lens to bring into focus the struggle against
counterrevolutionary forces in the bureaucracy and conservative
aspects of the "worker-peasant alliance," which latter NEP was
considered to be. The book's effect was to unleash a second
phase of the antiopposition campaign, the cumulative result of
which was that by 1925, the opposition which had originated in
1923 had been effectively silenced. The principal marker of this
defeat in the period which followed, and one which was to have
incalculable effects on the future of socialism, not to mention
on the legacy of the October Revolution — and, indeed, on the
revolutionary project of "building a new life" — was the
formulation at the end of 1924 of the doctrine of "socialism in
one country." The Bolshevik Revolution had been international
in scope. According to Trotskii's theory of "uneven and
combined development," a revolutionary outbreak could easily
occur in a backward country, and not just in a major
industrialized nation which had gone through its capitalist
phase, such as Britain or Germany. There was no question,
however, of such a revolution being more than a holding
operation to stimulate further revolutions in those advanced
countries. There are numerous statements of the implications
of this view, but Lenin's argument to the Third Congress of the
Comintern in 1921 is particularly clear: "Even prior to the
Bolshevik revolution, as well as after it, we thought that the
revolution would also occur either immediately or a least very
soon in other backward countries and in the more highly
developed capitalist countries. Otherwise we would perish."66
When the revolutionary wave ebbed after 1921 and the
capitalist system managed to stabilize itself, the Russian
Revolution was obviously going to have to try to hold out for
longer than had been intended. NEP was one response to this
development. The central point is that NEP was a temporary
measure until the capitalist crisis reasserted itself and the
tempo of struggle rose again, yet it also transpired that NEP
seemed in its own fabric to be turning away from this
perspective. As NEP appeared to accommodate more and more
to the norm, it was precisely the formation of the Left
Opposition within NEP, as Naomi Allen has argued, which
now took on the original project: "The existence of an
organized Opposition would resist the free expansion of the
bureaucracy, subject it to criticism, and perhaps retard its
development long enough to keep intact the roots of the
proletarian dictatorship until conditions for its existence
improved."67 Such an awaited capitalist crisis did indeed occur
with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the entry of the world
system into profound slump during the 1930s, a slump which
was only definitively terminated by the outbreak of World War
II at the end of that decade. But by the time of the onset of the
crisis at the close of the 1920s, the revolutionary movement had
undergone profound change — and the main symptom was
"socialism in one country." The idea of building up an
independent industrialized state in Russia had been foreign to
the Bolsheviks. It now became the central plan of policy —
initially within the scope of the mixed, relatively unplanned,
economy of NEP. Later, however, as NEP itself entered its
terminal crisis, the stage was set for a "third period," which
transformation is also important for understanding the later
trajectory of the avant-garde.
For the moment, however, what should be noted is that the
Left Opposition of 1923 and 1924, which had been crushed by
1925, began to rise again in a second incarnation in 1926. The
paradoxical factor here was that those members of the
triumvirate who had sided with Stalin to break the Left
Opposition that was centered on Trotskii now began to fear the
increasing concentration of power in the hands of the General
Secretariat. In an abrupt about-face, Zinov'ev, with his power
base in Leningrad, now joined forces with Trotskii to
constitute a new and more powerful united opposition. By this
time, Bukharin had become the main defender of NEP — of, as
he famously put it, "socialism at a snail's pace" — and as such,
Stalin's main ally against the opposition. This new opposition
reached a peak in 1927, a peak, moreover, much higher than has
often been thought. On the basis of new evidence, Reiman has
argued that "the importance of the left opposition is often
underestimated in the literature. It is considered an important
current in Soviet ideological and political life, a kind of 'revolt
of the leaders' . . . but many authors doubt that the opposition
had any substantial influence on the mass of party members
and even less on broader sections of the population. One can
hardly agree with such views."68 Reiman goes on to cite an
impressive catalogue of opposition successes in various
geographical regions, in sections of the organized working class
in the major cities, and, once again, in the army and the higher
education institutions. There is an international dimension
here as well as a domestic one, which complicates the issue:
just as the failure of the German revolution played a part in the
formation of the opposition in 1923, so now the disastrous
policies of the bureaucracy toward the revolution in China
contributed to the force of the opposition in 1927.
Whatever the multiplicity of causes, the result was a rise in
14
mass meetings of industrial workers, underground strike
committees, and suchlike. When a leading oppositionist, Ivar
Smilga, was being got out of the way by assignment to a
remote posting — quite a common tactic by the leadership — a
crowd of two thousand people gathered, listened to speeches by
Zinov'ev and Trotskii, and cheered Smilga to his train.
Although the united/left opposition of 1926— 27 aimed
principally to promote the workers' resistance to the decline
they were suffering under NEP, Fitzpatrick argues that
"Opposition condemnation of NEP . . . probably did arouse a
response among students."6'' There was also support in youth
organizations. Overall, "opposition propaganda steadily grew
in intensity. The opposition flooded party units with leaflets,
pamphlets and other material contributing to a further decline
in the Politburo's authority ... By the end of July the situation
in the party had taken fairly definite shape. The opposition
succeeded in increasing its influence; it was beginning to think
that a change in the party leadership might be attainable at the
forthcoming 15th Party Congress."" Trotskii later estimated
that in 1927 the opposition had 20,000 to 30,000 active
members in Moscow alone.
Despite fierce internal conflicts among the leadership,
culminating in the expulsion of Trotskii and Zinov'ev from the
Central Committee, the opposition's influence continued to
grow throughout the summer, leading to the publication in
September 1927 of the Platform of the Opposition. This echoed
many of the criticisms of NEP of the earlier opposition, citing
the growth of money-commodity relations, increasing social
stratification, and lack of democracy, and proffered as well a
newer condemnation of the policy of economic autarky. The
Platform runs to twelve chapters in some ninety pages. It notes
that "there exist in our society these forces hostile to our
cause — the kulak, the Nepman, the bureaucrat" and
recommends a continuous struggle "on all sectors of the
economic, political and cultural fronts.""' A week after its
publication, the Platform was banned. A major shift was
necessary to implement the ban, requiring nothing less than
that the leadership alter — that is, effectively break — the Party's
own rules. The state security forces (the GPU), built up by the
bureaucracy, were turned against the Party itself. Reiman
comments: "Events quickly approached a climax. The
opposition, mobilizing its considerable store of influence, tried
to make a show of strength to turn the situation to its favour.
During Leningrad's celebration of the 10th anniversary of the
October revolution in mid-October 1927, the opposition
suddenly received impressive support. Trotsky, Zinoviev and
other oppositionists who found themselves by chance on one of
the official reviewing platforms as the workers of Leningrad
paraded past, found themselves the object of demonstrative
greetings and cheers from the crowd of a hundred thousand." :
This situation was not allowed to repeat itself on the official
anniversary of the Revolution on November 7th. Marches and
meetings were broken up, speakers howled down. The GPU
had entered fully onto the political stage, in consort with
which another massive propaganda campaign was mounted.
The October demonstration had proved to be the limit. The
last demonstration by the Left Opposition took place on
November 19, 1927. At the Fifteenth Party Congress, which
opened on December 2nd, Trotskii along with seventy-five
other leading members of the opposition was expelled from the
Party. Next, Trotskii was informed by the GPU that he was to
be deported under article 59 of the criminal code, which dealt
with counterrevolutionary activity. But such a large crowd
gathered on the proposed date, June 16, 1928 — several in the
crowd lay down on the railway tracks — that the authorities had
to resort to deception. According to Carr's account, the
departure was postponed for two days. Within twenty-four
hours, however, Trotskii's apartment was broken into by armed
police; he was driven to an outlying, cleared part of the station
and forced aboard a special train which then linked up with the
express well away from Moscow. After a journey by truck and
sleigh conveyed him another 150 miles beyond the nearest
railhead, Trotskii arrived in internal exile at Alma-Ata, at "the
extreme confines of the USSR," on January 25, 1928. A year
later, he was expelled from the Soviet Union altogether. In
Reiman's summary, "the basis for the existence of any kind of
opposition whatsoever inside the Soviet Communist Party had
been destroyed. From then on opposition was an unequivocal
political crime bringing stern punishment in its train.""5
The picture that emerges, then, is of a nearly seven-year
period, extending from the Tenth Party Congress in March
1921 to the Fifteenth Congress in December 1927, during which
the political direction of the Revolution was in a continual
process of negotiation and contestation. The end results were a
shift in basic premise from the internationalism of 1917 to the
doctrine of building "socialism in one country," and the
concentration of power in the hands of a central bureaucracy
led by Stalin. There were two great waves of opposition to this
from the left, in 1923-24 and again in 1926-27. This opposition
stood for a return to those principles of October which it
perceived to be undermined by NEP: that is to say, an
emphasis on socialism rooted in the working class, a reversal of
social stratification, a reassumption of planning in the
economy, and increased democracy (as well as a complex
international dimension with repercussions for the political
policy to be pursued in places like Germany and China, and for
the economic relationship of the Soviet Union to the capitalist
world).
It had been common for the avant-garde in art at the time
of the Revolution, and even before, to be referred to as left
artists. Thus Tatlin was a member of the left bloc of the Union
of Art Workers in Petrograd in the period between the two
revolutions of 1917. He was also involved with the left
federation of the Moscow Professional Union of Artists and
Painters. The notion of an artistic left was quite prevalent,
both as a form of self-description among artists to distinguish
themselves from "bourgeois" tendencies and as a form of
criticism by those, either close to the Party or laying claim to
represent a "proletarian culture," who saw left art with its roots
in the bourgeois avant-garde as occupying that space where
petit-bourgeois individualism met anarchistic or libertarian
"ultraleftism." This latter view must have received succor from
Lenin's pamphlet critical of the council Communists and
related groups, Detskaia bolezn' " levizny" v kommunizme (Left-
Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, 1920.) (It is perhaps
worth pointing out that the epithet refers less to the
childishness or immaturity of the attitude per se than to the
relative youth of the Communist movement which, as such, is
given to wild enthusiasms and excesses that need to be
stabilized.) The point is, the identification of the avant-garde
as an artistic left, in a rather diffuse sense, was commonplace,
somewhat after the manner in which the term "Futurist" was
deployed.
Things seem to be different, however, in the succeeding
period. When Maiakovskii organized the Left Front of the Arts
around the journal Lef first published in March 1923, "left" was
not a diffuse term but a label for a coherent grouping or, more
likely, regrouping offerees intended to intervene in a changing
situation. Le/lasted for seven issues and drew in most of the
literary and artistic avant-garde at the levels of both practice
and theory. It was quite a large magazine with a print run for
the first issue of five thousand copies. Three thousand copies
were printed of the third issue, and there were no less than four
issues in 1923. There were only two, however, in 1924, and the
15
final issue, with a print run of only 1,500, came out early in
1925. Maiakovskii had, according to Brik, started to think
about a new "organizational grouping" as early as the end of
1921, but the proposal was not worked out until a year later."4
When the magazine came out in early 1923, the members of Lef
referred to themselves as the "Bolsheviks of art" and quite
explicitly saw their context as a situation where "now there is a
respite from war and hunger," i.e., the New Economic Policy.
The authorities' attention had previously been taken up with
winning the Civil War. Now this was no longer the case, and
time and resources could begin to be devoted to a variety of
forms of reconstruction. However, the end of the Civil War and
the introduction of NEP had given new strength to other
cultural forces, such as figurative painting in the visual arts
and a bolstering of more traditional forms (which Trotskii
called "Classicism") in literature. The "Bolsheviks of art"
needed a platform in order to redress the balance which under
NEP seemed to be tilting away from them. Thus it seems that
internal and external dynamics came together at the beginning
of 1923: respectively, the need to articulate a coherent and
believable redescription of the left perspective for a "communist
art (as part of corn-culture and communism in general!)" and a
context which offered some hope for that argument finding a
resonance. There is no point in dropping pennies down a well;
conversely, one does not print five thousand copies of a
magazine intended to influence only one's friends. Whatever it
was that made the project of a Left Front of the Arts
sustainable in 1923 clearly ebbed during 1924 and faded out
altogether in early 1925. And there is no question of this being
mere exhaustion on the part of Lef's members. Rodchenko and
Maiakovskii continued their advertising work for the state
stores and organizations. Both flung themselves into work for
the Exposition Internationale des arts decoratifs et industriels
modernes {International Exhibition of Contemporary Decorative and
Industrial Art) in Paris. Rodchenko's reading room for a
workers' club clearly embodied Constructivist-leftist
principles, and Maiakovskii commissioned a new model of the
Monument to the Third International from Tatlin — which Tatlin
built in record time. It may be that there seemed to be more
scope for an impact internationally than domestically, given
what the Soviet cultural situation had become by 1925 — with
the added insurance policy that work celebrated abroad would
be less susceptible to suppression at home.
At the end of 1926, Benjamin noted how the regime was
"above all trying to bring about a suspension of militant
communism, to usher in a period free of class conflict, to
depoliticize the life of its citizens as much as possible"; "an
attempt," he wrote, "is being made to arrest the dynamic of
revolutionary progress in the life of the state. ""s This is not, of
course, to say that everything was now lost. In a way, that is
precisely the point: the situation was still contested. For all his
registration of the changes taking place under NEP to the
detriment of the left in both culture and politics, Benjamin
was also able to appreciate the vitality which was still present
in Soviet society: "Life here [is] so extraordinarily meaningful."
He goes on: "The entire scheme of existence of the Western
European intelligentsia is utterly impoverished in comparison
to the countless constellations that offer themselves to an
individual here in the space of a month." In a telling image, he
likened life in the Soviet Union to conditions in the Klondike
gold rush: "It is as insular and as eventful, as impoverished and
yet in the same breath as full of possibilities."7'' When he
returned to Berlin, he was moved to comment that, with all its
civilization, "for someone who has arrived from Moscow, Berlin
is a dead city."77 Given this situation, one should then ask what
it was that made Lef stem like a viable proposition again in
1927. And, having asked that question, one has to wonder why
New Lef folded again in 1928. What doors opened, and then
closed, in 1927 and 1928? For the timing, again, is crucial. As
has been noted earlier, Maiakovskii's New Lef editorial spoke of
the need to restart publication "because the situation of culture
in the sphere of art has been completely messed up," and cited
the equation of market demand with cultural value as the main
problem."8 Yet there was nothing new in this. Vertov had been
slating the "caste of parasites," the "NEP shopkeepers" who
"make drunkards of the proletariat using cinema-vodka" since
1923-24 — since, in fact, the heyday of the first Lef'9 What gave
the spur to publish in January 1927 was that, despite the lack
of a periodical, Maiakovskii perceived that "Lef has won and is
winning in many sectors of culture."80 Which is to say, there
appeared to be an upturn in the fortunes of the left, a new
audience for a reformulation of Lef's position. Once again,
Benjamin notes the contradictory currents. On the one side,
showing the weakness of the cultural left, is the fact that
Grigorii Lelevich, a prominent figure on the proletarian
journal Na postu (On Guard), was being sent away from Moscow
at the Party's behest — as we have seen was also the case with
political oppositionists. On the other is Benjamin's record of
how Lelevich bemoaned the fact that his departure would cause
him to miss a major speech to the Comintern by Trotskii, and
how he also claimed that "the Party is on the verge of a
turnabout."8'
Things like magazines and organizations do not ebb and
flow arbitrarily. Their rise and fall are the function of a
complex dialectic of forces, internal and external dynamics
whose confluence is the organization or the publication. It
seems incontrovertibly to be the case that the need for a
defined left front in the arts was fueled by a requirement to
contest the threatened hegemony of more conservative cultural
forces. These forces, in turn, were fueled by NEP. For its part,
Lef was related to the ebb and flow of a wider Left Opposition
to NEP. As this Left Opposition fought the growing political
influence of "the kulak, the Nepman, the bureaucrat," so the
left in the cultural field echoed the slogan with a perception of
its own opponents as "rightist social strata, the intelligentsia
and petty bourgeoisie."82
This is not to say that Lef was in any simple sense a cultural
"reflection" of the Left Opposition or, indeed, that the latter's
broad programs somehow overarched a more specific platform
of the left in art. The Platform of the Opposition, all ninety-odd
pages and twelve chapters, makes no mention whatsoever of
art, literature, film, architecture, or culture generally; it is
solely a political, socioeconomic document. Organizations of
artists and writers, let alone the substantive beliefs they
articulate, do not "reflect" political events. Such is not even an
adequate statement of much maligned "vulgar" Marxism. Both
political parties and cultural groups are superstructural with
respect to an underlying economic mode of production.
Nonetheless, a variety of shifting responses do occur between
different, relatively autonomous spheres. In one of the many
discussions among Asja Lacis, Bernhard Reich, and ordinary
Russians in the sanatorium where Lacis was undergoing
treatment, Benjamin notes almost wearily, "The issue was once
again opposition within the Party."8' The key phrase is "once
again": the opposition was clearly a live issue. Not to relate the
ebbs and flows of the left in art to the ebbs and flows of a more
broadly constituted left, particularly in a situation such as that
which prevailed in the Soviet Union during the 1920s, is to
strip that cultural milieu of a whole dimension of its identity.
One cannot help feeling that the persistent determination to
do so has more to do with ideological shibboleths of our own
culture than with any faithfulness to the revolutionary avant-
garde. The reality of the Russian Revolution still threatens a
capitalist system — a system both moral and economic — and
16
the more insistently it can be restricted in scope, rigidified,
and made synonymous with the barbarism that supplanted it,
the better, from such a point of view. To relate the avant-garde
to a site of complex political (and social and moral)
contestation is not, however, to reduce it to a reflex of that
political struggle. The debates within the left front of the arts,
within the various other institutions the cultural left
inhabited, far exceeded in sophistication anything the political
left ever generated about art, design, literature, or culture as a
whole. Nonetheless, by its very nature that political left was
alert to the practicalities of the situation in ways which often
bypassed the artists, even though, ultimately, they were
affected by them.
In terms, then, of the political spectrum of the Revolution
and the NEP period, it appears fruitful to relate the erstwhile
avant-garde, the left front of the arts, first of all to the ethos of
October itself as this was worked out in the immediately
postrevolutionary "heroic" phase of War Communism:
planning, classlessness, rejection of the past, an almost tabula-
rasa-like sense of building the new life from the bottom up,
moving from analysis into synthesis. And then to relate it to
the emerging perspective of a Left Opposition in which
planning and workers' democracy remained priorities in the
face of their erosion by the dominant forces of the New
Economic Policy. The avant-garde, the left front, is thus
related to the Left Opposition. It is so, however, not as a
reflection but as kind of relatively autonomous equivalent. To
borrow from a slightly different context Buchloh's felicitous
rendering, it was its "historically logical aesthetic correlative."
That is the claim of this essay: that on at least four grounds the
left front of the arts can be read as the cultural correlative of
the predominantly Trotskiist Left Opposition: in terms of
hostility to NEP; in terms of a commitment to planning; in
terms of a requirement for a level of working-class prosperity
to consume the goods produced; and in terms of a requirement
for industrial democracy to provide an environment in which
the artistic-constructor/engineer might function.'4
Circumstantial evidence, such as the penetration of the
institutions of higher education by the ideas and organization
ol the left, and the peaks and troughs of Lef's own activity,
appears to support this argument. The alternatives, conversely,
are less persuasive: that the avant-garde, even at the moment of
October and in its aftermath, was devoid of a coherent political
perspective. Or, if it may be said to have had a politics, that
this was compatible with NEP.*' For the reasons given above,
neither seems likely. In addition to which, an opposing artistic
grouping appears to have flourished under NEP conditions and
to have been able relatively to marginalize the left avant-garde
during the NEP period.
Ill
Two principal questions remain concerning the politics of the
avant-garde. I will address them in succession. First: If indeed
Lef was a kind of correlate to, or at least can be said to have
functioned in respect of some productive relationship with, the
Left Opposition, why did not the latter embrace it? The
relationship among Formalism, Futurism, and Marxism has
been the subject of considerable debate, and the usual view is
that the "Marxists" disapproved of the first two — of Formalism
vehemently, for appearing to sever the link between art and
society, and of Futurism for its roots in the bourgeois avant-
garde, its impracticality, and its incomprehensibility to
ordinary people.
A reconsideration might begin by arguing that the
"comprehensibility" issue has been overstated and does not
allow sufficiently for developments in the erstwhile avant-
garde's position, notably the prominent role played by
montage and factography. There were also nuances to the
avant-garde's concession that something valuable was being
lost by abandoning "Art" tout court to the past. Distinctions
emerged quite early between doctrinaire Productivist theorists
and the more flexible members of Lef. Rodchenko
exasperatedly remarked in an Inkhuk debate of April 1922 that
"if we carry on discussing, there will never be any actual
work";86 endless attempts to clarify the theory, that is, would
get in the way of what should be quite pragmatic responses to
the demands of a changing productive context. Also, in an
extraordinary allegory composed in 1925, Lissitzky wrote: "The
term A[rt] resembles a chemist's graduated glass. Each age
contributes its own quantity: for example, 5 drams of the
perfume 'Coty' to tickle the nostrils of the fine gentry. Or
another example, iocc of sulfuric acid to be thrown into the
face of the ruling classes. Or, 15a: of some kind of metallic
solution that later changes into a new source of light. "8^ This
seems to be an elliptical proposition of three stages of art: the
history of art since the Renaissance, in the service of the ruling
class; art as an engaged, combative form of agitation and
propaganda during the revolutionary period, against a class
system; and, finally, art as a contribution to building the new
world, a transforming element. The "metallic solution" may
refer to practical design; the "new source of light" is, however,
clearly more. As Lissitzky goes on to say: "This A[rt] is an
invention of the mind, i.e. a complex, where rationality is fused
with imagination."88 Offering a different inflection to the
continuing validity of a notion of art, Maiakovskii granted his
famous "amnesty" to Rembrandt and acknowledged that, after
all, the Revolution needed a sonnet as well as a newspaper. For
his part, Rodchenko seems increasingly to have sought images
produced in a modern, "mechanical" way that would jolt
conventional perceptions of the world, rather than seeking
simply to design new bits of it. Whether this is seen as a
"retreat" or a development from a onesided initial position has
much to do with the commentator's own perspective on and
sympathy for the problems of a revolutionary art. The October
group, formed as an umbrella organization for left artists in
1928, and as such one of the last attempts to frame a modified
left position, likewise tried to effect a rapprochement between
construction and design, on the one hand, and the production
of images, on the other.89
It is worth recalling in this connection that the status of
painting as a possible locale for radical cultural practice
remains hotly contested to this day, and that the assumption
that it was irrevocably tied to the past was widespread among
the cultural left of the period and not confined to the
Constructivists. Benjamin's essay of the mid-i930s, "Das
Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen
Reproduzierbarkeit" ("The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction"), is perhaps the locus classicus of
the tendency. The aloofness of modern painting — with its
rhetoric of an unlearned aesthetic sensitivity, so easily
corrupted into apologetics for a social elite — has won it few
friends among socialists. Vasilii Kandinskii's collapsing of
socialism and historical materialism into the mire of bourgeois
materialism and acquisitiveness is only one particularly glaring
and uncontrite example. Painting's reactionary affiliations were
not merely traceable to the "aura," as Benjamin termed it, in
which unique works of art were bathed. The institution of
avant-garde art was permeated by haut-bourgeois exclusivity
and snobbishness — which is, presumably, what led
Maiakovskii on his trip to Paris in the midtwenties to liken
French artists, with the exception of Fernand Leger, to "slimy
oysters." In such a perspective, the readiness of the left avant-
garde to search for ways to democratize art, to render it useful
to the revolutionary social project, rather than simply to bury
17
it and have done, takes on a rather different aspect.
Turning now to the central issue of the historical
confrontation between the avant-garde and the Left
Opposition, we can locate its main site in Trotskii's Literatura
i revoliutsiia (Literature and Revolution)?" This study, written
mostly in 1923 and published in 1924, is contemporaneous with
the first phase of the Left Opposition's ascendancy; as such, it is
as close as one is likely to get to an authoritative Left
Opposition theory of art. The text, particularly its passages on
Tatlin's Tower, has been subject to cavalier quotation and
excerpting, designed to prove how intolerant the Party
leadership was of the avant-garde, how the walls were closing
in even by 1924, and how the course was set for the final
"Marxist" closure on free artistic experiment that was realized
in the early thirties. In fact, any even moderately receptive
reading of Trotskii's full text cannot fail to register its relative
openness. Not the least interesting feature of it is that a figure
with Trotskii's commitments should, at that period, devote a
full-length treatment to this range of questions at all. As for
the views he articulates: he is unequivocally critical of
theoretical Formalism (not surprising, since it was
unequivocally critical of Marxism), regarding it as a species of
Idealism. However, in the spectrum of artistic tendencies
reviewed, from aesthetically conservative positions, Symbolism,
and the literary "fellow travelers" through advocates of a
distinctive "proletarian culture," Trotskii repeatedly gives the
benefit of the doubt, and indeed a kind of priority, to the
Futurist-Lef nexus. What he will not do is accede to demands
that the Party recognize any particular grouping, Lef included,
as the authentic voice of Communist art. For Trotskii, socialist,
let alone Communist, culture lies in the future. The shape it
will take will be derived from a classless society that does not
yet exist. In the period of the "proletarian dictatorship," the
main criterion to be applied when judging a work of art is the
extent to which it helps in the future realization of such a
culture. When weighed in these scales, Lef, though found
ultimately wanting by Trotskii, nonetheless comes out fairly
well.
It has to be remembered that Trotskii was not an art critic
and, at this date, was not overly familiar with the products of
the European avant-garde, having had other things on his
mind for most of the preceding two decades since the "dress
rehearsal" of 1905. Given the unfamiliarity of that avant-garde's
devices and the threat these must have posed to a consciousness
raised on the norms of Enlightenment/classical culture, it is
Trotskii's bias in favor of toleration rather than dismissiveness
that deserves our attention. His relative openness to Modernist
technical devices is marked — compared, for example, to
Lukacs's positions developed in the later twenties and thirties.
Where Trotskii undoubtedly struggles is with post-Cubist
techniques, broadly speaking, of collage-montage and
construction. The most sustained discussions he offers in this
respect are of Maiakovskii's "150,000,000" and Tatlin's
Monument to the Third International. What is quite clear is that
the "flatness" involved in post-Cubist work, literary as well as
visual, its relative "all-overness," such that conventional
compositional dramatics and focuses are denied, its suspension
of narrative developments and climaxes, the abrupt shifts it
employs rather than orthodox modulations, violated
Trotskii's canon of judgment: "The principal fault of futurist
poetry even in its best examples, lies in the absence of a sense
of measure . . . [Maiakovskii's images] quite often disintegrate
the whole and paralyze the action . . . the whole piece has no
climax . . . The parts refuse to obey the whole. Each part tries
to be separate," and so on.9' Trotskii's weak arguments about
function in his treatment of Tatlin's Tower are little more than
the sculptural equivalent of his difficulties before Maiakovskii's
poem or, indeed, a painting. "What is it for" replaces "what
does it represent" as the cri de coeur of one whose categories are
being brought into question without his having the resources
adequately to reply. As ever, the response is to deploy the
criteria of the previously accepted paradigm as natural,
indexed — according to the author's political disposition — to
"competence" or to "popularity."
There is nothing unusual about this kind of critical
difficulty, it is one of the effects of specialization in modern
culture. (It is interesting that Trotskii adopts approximately
the same kind of suspended judgment, underwritten by a
fundamental concern for the security of the Revolution, for
contemporary scientific developments.) Few enough could, in
the early 1920s, write with understanding about Cubist
devices. What Trotskii does is to try to rescue the impetus of
the work, of which he approves, for a kind of traditional
humanism from whose refusal as the stock-in-trade of
normative art that "impetus," paradoxically, is derived. Little
enough of this was clear at the time. For all his condemnation
of "pure" Formalism in 1923—24, it is an intriguing question
what Trotskii would have made, given his relative openness to
and curiosity about avant-garde art, of the "social Formalism"
of Mikhail Bakhtin, Pavel Medvedev, and Voloshinov which
emerged in the mid- and late 1920s. This is one of those
conjunctions, however, which the history of the twentieth
century remaindered before it had chance to be born. As it is,
Trotskii's somewhat rotund categories failed to mesh fully with
the avant-garde work which came under his review. This is not,
however, to place his arguments in a presumed continuum of
suppression, an assertion which his status as leader of the
political opposition to that "continuum" would contradict.
Notwithstanding his critical difficulties with Futurism, some
the result of relative ignorance, some fruitful and generative,
Trotskii's overall assessment is clear: "Though remaining, in
some respects, a Bohemian revolutionary offshoot of the old
art, futurism contributes to a greater degree and more directly
and actively than all other tendencies, in forming the new
art."92
Trotskii's text, though authoritative, is not, however, the
only one we have which sheds light on the attitude of the
political Left Opposition to the avant-garde. Nikolai Gorlov, a
prerevolutionary Old Bolshevik, allied in the early 1920s with
Trotskii, wrote a reply to him, as well as a pamphlet running
to sixty pages and entitled Futurizm i revolutsiia (Futurism and
Revolution)^ Both were published in 1924, the former in Lef. In
the words of the editor of a 1975 French compendium, Gorlov 's
pamphlet "represents an exemplary attempt (albeit an isolated
one on the part of a politician)" to clarify the relation between
artistic issues and "the new economic and social structures born
of the revolution.'"'4 Gorlov is more perspicacious than Trotskii
about the relations of existing art with bourgeois society. In
particular, his technical grasp of the avant-garde's innovations
exceeds Trotskii's, resulting in prolonged textual analysis of
Maiakovskii's poetry based on the claim that "Futurism has
emancipated the word."'" He goes on: "It is time to understand
that form and content are one, that the new content will
inevitably be cramped in the old form, and that the old form
has become for us a barrel organ on which you can play
nothing but 'Farewell.'"96 In Gorlov 's compelling image, the
left avant-garde, Futurism, constituted "the red army of
words."97
This is not, of course, to imply that political supporters of
the Left Opposition would necessarily be sympathetic to left
art. There just is not such a symmetry between politics and
aesthetics, then or now. Nonetheless, in the two examples we
have of discussions of avant-garde art by Left Opposition
figures there is no out-and-out rejection of the avant-garde.
18
Rather, the converse: there are the beginnings of what could
have been a constructive dialogue with it. It is perhaps not
irrelevant that Trotskii was to form a more explicit alliance
with the leading representative of another left avant-garde over
a decade later. Andre Breton's trajectory may shed an oblique
light on what was not possible for the Soviet avant-garde.
IV
The second of the two concluding questions concerns the
relationship of the left avant-garde to Stalinism. Of all
questions, this is the most insistent at the present time, and is
likely to continue to be so as Stalinist culture is opened up to
scrutiny. The manner in which conservative accounts are
already beginning to elide the differences between the two has
been noted above. This dynamic in the scholarship of the
present period sharply points up the need for the accurate
historical positioning of the avant-garde, not least to recover
and sustain its examples for radical positions in the present —
positions which are likely to find themselves more rather than
less beleaguered amid the liberal triumphs of any "new world
order" than heretofore. In a study of Klutsis, Margarita
Tupitsyn has recently described this issue as the big "off-
limits" question.9* Likewise, Bois's attention was inescapably
drawn to it with regard to Lissitzky, where the question of
continuity between the different phases of his career becomes
urgent. Bois's answer was to claim significant t/wcontinuity:
"I therefore propose the following thesis: there is indeed a
schism between . . . the Brechtian' Lissitzky and the 'Stalinist'
Lissitzky."99 Bois saw this "schism," furthermore, not as one
between a formally pure avant-garde and an instrumentalist
view of art but, importantly, as one "between two ways of
conceiving the relations between art and ideology." I believe
that Bois is substantially correct in his suggestive analysis of
the way in which technical radicalism can, and was intended
to, function not purely aesthetically but as "a radical critique of
the social order."100 His essential point is that Lissitzky was at
first able to sustain a radical suspension of alternatives, to
destabilize the spectator's spatial assumptions — as analogues
for social assumptions — without replacing them with
readymade solutions; but that, as the dictatorship grew in
power, it overwhelmed this fragile possibility and inserted its
own new/old closures into the sphere of graphic and ideological
work alike. "As long as Lissitzky kept intact the Utopian force
of his (political) desire," the radical project was sustainable; but
"as soon as the circumstances closed off his Utopian impulse,"
he was faced with no possibilities other than silence or
service.'0'
The foregoing discussion of the Left Opposition may have
deepened understanding of the context which helped the
avant-garde to sustain the transformative force of its political
desire. In similar vein, it may help to know the precise nature
of the "circumstances" which finally "closed off this
impulse — not least because such knowledge may suggest why,
for some at least, service won out over silence. This is always,
one suspects, going to be puzzling to those of a liberal cast of
mind: how can avant-garde artists bring themselves to serve a
totalitarian dictatorship? The answer can only be coercion!
Conversely, to conservatives, that service confirms the iniquity
of those who lend their support to violent revolution in the
first place.
The preceding account can shed some light on this
"inexplicable" transformation by once again situating the left
front in art in terms of a wider left in the Soviet political
process of the 1920s. The paradox is that the final defeat of the
Left Opposition at the end of 1927 quickly seemed to be
reversed as the policies of the left apparently rose phoenixlike
from the ashes of opposition to become the Party leadership's
new official position. There is insufficient space here to dwell
on this shift, but, in brief, what happened was twofold.
Although some Trotskiists and in particular Trotskii himself
remained opposed to the Stalinist bureaucracy — and were cast
into outer darkness for it — others, and in addition those
behind Zinov'ev, quickly turned around and sought
readmission to the fold. Simultaneously with these political
shifts, the economic contradictions of NEP finally came to a
head. Some of the flavor of the situation comes out in a
memorandum from Maksim Litvinov to Russian diplomatic
representatives abroad, dated February 9, 1928: "In the last few
days the economic situation, contrary to earlier expectations,
has deteriorated sharply. Serious breakdowns in supply have
already occurred on the food market which will probably force
the workers' and peasants' government to start rationing the
most important food items within the next few days . . . The
situation is to be regarded as extremely serious ... I repeat
once again that the workers' and peasants' government is
seriously concerned about the future course of events."'02 Crisis
in the countryside was matched by crisis in the cities. Major
food shortages forced people onto the private market where
prices were higher, which had the effect of producing de facto
wage cuts. Consequently, strikes broke out. Added to this, old
machinery in the factories was wearing out anyway under the
drive to increase production, with the result that the condition
of workers deteriorated. The circumstances of those who were
unemployed was worse. The result was that "alcoholism,
prostitution, 'hooliganism' and crime assumed frightening
dimensions, amounting to a veritable social disaster."10' The
leadership's response was to revert to the "extraordinary
measures" of War Communism, which in this case essentially
amounted to a war on the peasantry in the form of the forced
extraction of food for the cities. This process involved the
leadership around Stalin turning on its erstwhile NEP ally,
Bukharin, who now assumed leadership of a short-lived Right
Opposition dedicated to preserving NEP and the system of
supports for the peasant. This turn against the right, and
against NEP, and the rapid resumption of a rhetoric, if not yet
a reality, of planned intervention in the economy — which then
led quickly to the adoption of the Five- Year Plan proper and,
concomitantly, to a renewed emphasis on industry rather than
agriculture, i.e., on the worker rather than the peasant —
conspired to convey an impression to only too willing
oppositionists that the Party had finally seen the light and
adopted the program of the left.
This impression was strengthened by a dramatic increase in
propaganda against the new "right deviation," as well as, once
again, the pronouncement of a new line in the International.
This referred to a "third period," a period of new class
antagonisms following on the period of stabilization to which
NEP had been a response. The "third period" constituted a
lurch to ultraleftism, an assertion of "class against class,"
according to which, for example, social democrats became,
rather than potential allies of Communists against capital, class
enemies indistinguishable from Fascists as upholders of
international capitalism. The rhetorical madhouse which the
international Communist movement became — wherein that
movement was effectively reduced to a tool of Russian foreign
policy — was accompanied both in the Soviet Union and abroad
by a renewed emphasis on "proletarianism."
Many erstwhile Left Oppositionists now became the
staunchest defenders of the new "left" turn — of militant
proletarianism and, in particular, of the Five- Year Plan. That
this allegedly left turn had nothing to do with either Bolshevik
internationalism — its basis, after all, was the slogan of
"socialism in one country" — or with improved conditions for
the workers, escaped notice in the welter of propaganda in an
19
increasingly centralized political system which now lacked any
place for dissent. Workers occupied center stage for
propaganda. The point was, they had to. They were the ones
who were making the sacrifices to build up the new autarkic
economy: heroes of propaganda on the one (mythical) hand,
victims of "primitive socialist accumulation" on the other (all
too real) one. Contrary to appearances at the time, what was
happening was far from an implementation of the left's policies
in favor of a working-class-based socialist democracy; it was the
final defeat of such a vision. Carr in his definitive history of the
process speaks of a "counterrevolution." Deutscher calls it
Stalin's "second revolution." Reiman refers to "a complex break
with the meaning and essence of the social doctrine of
socialism."104 Alex Callinicos sums up the situation: "'Socialist'
industrialization in the USSR was made possible not simply by
the destruction of the peasantry but by the intense exploitation
of the very class which in theory ruled the country and was
supposed to be the main beneficiary of the changes involved."'"
Even Trotskii was not completely clear about what was going
on. For most people, the wave of propaganda about the "third
period," the left turn, and the great leap to build up a workers'
state before it was crushed by the imperialists carried all before
it. As Stalin put it in 1931: "The pace must not be slackened.
We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries.
We must close this gap in ten years. Either we shall do it, or
they will crush us."'°6 If the left front of the arts was indeed
influenced by the fortunes of the Left Opposition, it would not
be entirely surprising to find committed avant-gardists
throwing their technical expertise behind the institution of the
Five- Year Plan.
One of the points which needs to be borne in mind here is
the class position of artists and designers, not to mention
theorists. They were not proletarians. They would not have
experienced the sharp end of the exploitation mounting in the
factories and mines. Quite the contrary: the misery in the
countryside and the superintensification of productivity in
industry would all have been mediated through the terms of
the very propaganda campaign whose articulation was the site
of the contribution of the designers. The chance to participate
in the great leap revolved around belief in the official image
(unless one wants to postulate mendacity of a degree which
seems highly unlikely). A hint of the pressures and
adjustments involved comes through in a comment by Lacis to
Benjamin shortly before he left the Soviet Union in January
1927. She claims he does not understand what is going on, and
tells him how, shortly after her own arrival in Russia, she had
wanted to return to Europe, "because everything seemed
finished in Russia and the opposition was absolutely correct."
What Lacis is at pains to impress upon Benjamin, however, is
that she had been wrong. Now she understands that things are
changing. What is happening is "the conversion of
revolutionary effort into technological effort." Now,
"revolutionary work does not signify conflict or civil war but
rather electrification, canal construction, creation of
factories."'07 The ideology of "socialism in one country" and the
way it was presented, as if a corner had been turned so that
practical work on the new society could begin, seeped into the
perspectives even of those who had originally been hostile to
the turn events were taking. This is not to say that material
circumstances did not count for something. At the very time
during the First Five-Year Plan when industrial wages were
falling by fifty percent, Stalin incorporated into his program
systematic differentials in favor of managers and specialists. It
is not unknown, after all, even in our own impeccable
institutions of higher enlightenment, for hearts and minds to
follow wage packets.
One of the key social roles in any system is that of
technician-specialist. The notion in a workers' democracy is
that these individuals are controlled by the mass of workers
through the organs of that industrial democracy. In a capitalist
system, as, indeed, in the bureaucratic system operating by
that time in the Soviet Union, their functions are, however,
managerial. With the so-called Shakhty trial in 1928, which set
the pace for the show trials of the thirties, a scare was
unleashed against foreign specialists as "saboteurs."
Concomitantly, the need for new "Soviet specialists" was
proclaimed. It is probably in this context that it becomes
possible to understand Rodchenko's enthusiasm for transferring
jurisdiction of Vkhutein from Narkompros — which was now
seen as hopelessly generalist and tainted with Anatolii
Lunacharskii's old-fashioned liberalism — to Vesenkha, the
Council of the National Economy and prime mover in the call
for new Soviet experts. This is an instance of the way in which
the situation in the late twenties, after all the difficulties
experienced by the left under NEP, seemed to offer a new lease
on life to the erstwhile avant-garde project of the "artist-
constructor." When the first groups of Rodchenko's students
graduated from Dermetfak (the combined Woodworking and
Metalworking faculties) in 1928 and 1929, this was the context
into which they fitted. Commentary on the event in the
Constructivist-influenced architectural press enthused that
"Until today our industry has had no specific core of specialists
working on the rational construction of articles used in
everyday life . . . Vkhutein has now begun to turn out
specialists of this type."108
Given this kind of productive locale, it is unlikely that
figures such as Rodchenko and Lissitzky saw through to the
problems of the working class at the base of the system. Or, to
the extent that they did, it is, conversely, very likely that they
believed themselves to be involved in the amelioration of the
workers' condition rather than the bolstering of the very
system which oppressed them. Thus Lissitzky in his 1930 An
Architecture for World Revolution explicitly accords to the
architect the role of leading emancipatory force for the "new
life," given the fact that, left to their own devices, the
"masses . . . tend to be shortsighted as far as their own growth
is concerned."'09 Without this idealization, both of the role of
the architect/designer/engineer and of the nature of the society
that was actually being built out of the crash industrialization
and forced collectivization of the First Five-Year Plan, how
could Lissitzky have written that "in our country the factory
has ceased to exist as a place of exploitation and as a hated
institution," and continue that, under the Five-Year Plan, "the
factory has become the real place of education: the university
for new socialist man'?"° The myth by which they were
completely carried away could not have been further from the
truth. Quite the reverse of crucibles of socialist education, the
factories were increasingly places of exploitation of the working
class. No less a figure than Lazar1 Kaganovich, one of Stalin's
closest collaborators on the Central Committee, argued,
somewhat at variance with Lissitzky's claim, that "the earth
should tremble when the director walks round the plant.""
It is extremely difficult to think oneself into a situation of
such contradictions, not that the system inhabited by Western
academics today is free of its own. Klutsis, a Latvian as well as
an Old Bolshevik — a potentially fatal combination in Stalin's
Russia — became one of the most powerful graphic voices of the
Five-Year Plans and an honored designer involved in work for
international exhibitions. None of this prevented him from
being arrested in 1938 and shot in a prison camp amid a purge
directed not only against national minorities but, tellingly,
against remnants of the Left Opposition (some of whom, with
unlikely heroism, had continued to organize in the Gulag).
Lissitzky survived. So did Rodchenko, who in 1930
20
documented the building of the White Sea Canal in
characteristically dramatic, formally dynamic, photographs.
The White Sea Canal has since been revealed as effectively a
mobile forced-labor camp in which tens if not hundreds of
thousands died. At the time, along with Magnitogorsk and
Dneprostroi, it was one of the prestige construction projects.
The myth was that previously antisocial elements underwent
voluntary socialist reeducation, working to the music of their
own orchestras and supervised only by a few benign Interior
Ministry police. Western enthusiasts such as Louis Aragon
were completely bowled over by the project, and in Aragon's
case it was instrumental in confirming his break with
Surrealism and Trotskiism and accession to an orthodox
Communist position which he sustained for the rest of his life.
What did Rodchenko see? What could he have done about it,
anyway? It was not easy even to stop working in Stalin's Russia
without drawing attention to oneself. And again, there is the
question of belief.
This takes us a long way from the question of the artistic
left front's relation to a political Left Opposition, and the
distance doubtless increases as the 1930s go on. Yet such a
range of possibilities, posed most starkly by the alternatives of
a retreat into silence or an embrace of the official line, did
confront the avant-garde at the end of the 1920s. Even the
choice of "silence" was a relative one and depended, in part, on
the resources an artist or designer needed in order to carry on
practicing. Thus disfavor as experienced by the architect Ivan
Leonidov did lead to silence. In Tatlin's case, his eccentricity
may be thought to have increased with the Letatlin project
(1929-32). Thereafter, he withdrew into work for the theater
and a private — and apparently occasional — return to painting.
Klutsis and Lissitzky, on the contrary, seem to have gone about
the propaganda task with some enthusiasm. Rodchenko 's work
appears to have split into "official" graphic design, on the one
hand, and his private, melancholy circus paintings, on the
other. This resumption of the two wings of bourgeois "fine"
and "applied" art stands as fair testimony to the failure of the
project of the synthesizer, the artist-constructor, building the
new society from a wholly original and specific practical
position."" The most catastrophic and implacable recognition of
that failure was Maiakovskii's. Just days before his suicide in
1930, he used the metonym of a candy wrapper to show how
everything had gone wrong. Futurists had fought against
Classicism, against the cultural values of bourgeois society. In
this spirit, Maiakovskii himself and Rodchenko had worked for
Mossel'prom and other state enterprises in an attempt to make
new values fundamental to the daily life of the socialist society.
Yet even in 1924, that daily life was unregenerated, sustained
by the conditions of an economic policy which was allowing,
even inviting, the old back in. The revival of the opposition in
1926-27 gave a glimmer of hope — sufficient, at least, to restart
Lef. The apparent belated recognition of the left's policies by
the leadership, and the formulation of the Five-Year Plans,
carried many along with it. This conjunction stimulated the
formation of the October group. Maiakovskii even tried once
again to draw closer to proletarianism by seeking membership
in RAPP (the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers), this
time to little avail. By 1930, Maiakovskii saw that all had been
a mirage. What had happened was not the belated resumption
of the values of the left but the final emplacement of a social
formation which would bury the left and its revolution for
generations. At this moment, in a meeting, as a gesture of
friendship, a woman gave Maiakovskii a candy, with a
Mossel'prom label on one side and a picture of the Venus de
Milo on the other.
The ridiculous little item was like a condenser for
everything that had gone wrong: the "twenty years of work," as
well as the October Revolution, which had given that work
practical focus, taken it out of the realm of the avant-garde
cenacle, and appeared to offer it a world to work with.
Maiakovskii's recognition was bleak: "So, the thing you've been
fighting against for twenty years has now won.""' His
conclusion had a remorseless logic, matched perhaps only by
Benjamin's later strictures about the need for the radical
Communist intellectual to "denature" his work if necessary, to
render it useless to all rather than usable by the enemy."4
Maiakovskii was, in fact, used by his enemy when canonized as
poet of the Revolution by Stalin in the mid-i930s in a
grotesque about-face. Even Boris Pasternak, no friend of the
Revolution, commented that this was Maiakovskii's second
death, one for which he was not responsible. Not everyone was
possessed of Maiakovskii's insight. The ideological power of
the dictatorship was colossal. And the Five-Year Plans were,
seemingly, successful: the Soviet Union built while the
capitalist world largely stagnated. Designers had an important
place, and were presumably gratified to serve what Lissitzky in
1930 still saw as the development of "a Socialistic society."", No
one who has not taken up an oppositional position against the
weight of a society's dominant readings should feel legitimated
to criticize Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Klutsis, and others who
designed for Stalin in the 1930s, particularly after Fascism
became the main enemy. It was, though, a long way from
October: closer, one might say, to the Berlin Wall than to
Tatlin's Tower, both monuments in their own ways to
Communism and what became of it. Now that the Wall has
come down, international socialism may mean something
again. Whether it does so or not is an open, yet concrete
question: "open" as the Tower, "concrete" as the Wall; and as
real as the relation of art and politics.
21
Notes
I would like to thank Steve Edwards for encouraging me to
complete this essay, and my editor Jane Bobko for her
invaluable contribution to improving the manuscript.
Lenin's remark in the epigraph was made in Zurich during the
First World War in conversation with a young Romanian
Dadaist, Marcu. Quoted in Robert Motherwell, ed., TheDada
Painters and Poets (New York: Wittenborn Schultz, 1951),
p. xviii.
1. John Bowlt, "The Old New Wave," New York Review of Books,
February 16, 1984, p. 28.
2. Vladimir Maiakovskii, letter to Nikolai Chuzhak, January
23, 1923, quoted in Wiktor Woroszylski, The Life of
Mayakovsky, trans. Boleslaw Taborski (London: Gollancz, 1972),
p. 315. Woroszylski's "biography" consists of a collage of
quotations from the writings of Maiakovskii and his
contemporaries.
3. Andrei Nakov, "Stylistic Changes — Painting Without a
Referent," trans. Susan Spund, in David Elliott, ed., Alexander
Rodchenko, catalogue for exhibition organized by the Museum
of Modern Art, Oxford (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art,
1979), PP- 56-57-
4. Vassily Rakitin, "The Avant-Garde and the Art of the
Stalinist Era," in Hans Gunther, ed., The Culture of the Stalin
Period (London: Macmillan, 1990), p. 185.
5. El Lissitzky, "Proun Space," in An Architecture for World
Revolution, trans. Eric Dluhosch (London: Lund Humphries,
1970), p. 138.
6. El Lissitzky, "Basic Premises," in Architecture for World
Revolution, p. 27.
7. Sophie Lissitzky-Kiippers, El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts,
trans. Helene Aldwinckle and Mary Whittall (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1968), p. 58.
8. Rakitin, "Avant-Garde and Art," p. 186.
9. Yve-Alain Bois, "El Lissitzky: Radical Reversibility," Art in
America, April 1988, pp. 161-81.
10. Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism (London and New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), p. 2.
11. Ibid., p. 140.
12. Ibid., p. 145.
13. Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, "From Faktura to Factography,"
October 30 (Fall 1984), pp. 82-119.
14. Francis Fukuyama, "The End of History?" The National
Interest 16 (Summer 1989), pp. 3-18.
15. See Boris Groys, "The Birth of Socialist Realism from the
Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde," in Culture of the Stalin
Period, pp. 122-47, an<J Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art:
In the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy and the People's
Republic of China, trans. Robert Chandler (London: Collins
Harvill, 1990). All quotations that follow are from these two
works. On Golomstock, see also Paul Wood, "The Retreat from
Moscow," Artscribe 88 (September 1991), pp. 48-53.
16. Bois, "El Lissitzky," p. 175.
17. Lenin, in July 1918, quoted in Duncan Hallas, The Comintern
(London: Bookmarks, 1985), p. 7.
18. E. H. Carr, Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926- 1929,
vol. 3, pt. 3 (London: Macmillan, 1978), p. 1018.
19. Victor Serge, quoted in Peter Sedgewick, introduction to
Memoirs of a Revolutionary, 1901-1941, by Victor Serge (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. xv— xvi. The passage is
quoted again in Alex Callinicos, The Revenge of History
(Cambridge: Polity, 1991), p. 25. The opening chapters of this
book contain further arguments for the discontinuity of
Bolshevik Marxism and Stalinism.
20. A partial exception here is the work of Sheila Fitzpatrick:
The Commissariat of Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1970); Education and Social Mobility in the
Soviet Union, 1921-1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1979); and Fitzpatrick, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia,
1928-1931 (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1978).
21. Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, 1921—1929
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 93.
22. E. H. Carr, The Russian Revolution from Lenin to Stalin,
1917-1929 (London: Macmillan, 1979), p. 34.
23. On this shift, see Paul Wood, "Art and Politics in a
Workers State," Art History 8, no. 1 (March 1985), pp. 105-24.
24. Vladimir Maiakovskii, quoted in Woroszylski, Mayakovsky,
pp. 185-86.
25. In this connection, a word of caution is in order for those
who leap to condemn Osip Brik for his probable involvement
at this time with the Cheka. Whatever the state security organs
later became, it was at that time a privilege to defend the
Revolution against its enemies on a "front" which paralleled
the actual fighting front of the Red Army. Feliks Dzerzhinskii
himself is described by Deutscher {Prophet Unarmed, p. 85) as
"incorruptible, selfless and intrepid," a complex figure who
existed in permanent tension between the sordid demands of
the Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle against a
Counterrevolution and a "lofty idealism," which made him in
his comrades' eyes a Savonarola of the Revolution. A similar
austerity seems to have characterized Brik.
26. Michael Reiman, The Birth of Stalinism: The U.S.S.R. on the
Eve of the "Second Revolution," trans. George Saunders (London:
I. B. Tauris, 1987).
27. Kino-Eye: The Writings ofDziga Vertov, ed. Annette
Michelson, trans. Kevin O'Brien (London: Pluto, 1984), p. 73.
28. Walter Benjamin, Moscow Diary, ed. Gary Smith, trans.
Richard Sieburth, October 35 (Winter 1985), p. 44.
29. David Elliott, introduction to Elliott, Alexander Rodchenko,
p. 6.
30. Varvara Stepanova, "Photomontage," in Elliott, Alexander
Rodchenko, p. 93.
31. Osip Brik, "Into Production," in Elliott, Alexander
Rodchenko, pp. 90—91, 130-31. See also Osip Brik, "Mayakovsky
and the Literary Movements of 1917-1930," in "Osip Brik:
Selected Writings Presented by Maria Enzensberger," Screen 15,
no. 3 (Autumn 1974), pp. 35-118. See especially p. 69. I also
discuss this point in my "Art and Politics in a Workers State."
See especially pp. 114— 15.
32. Kino-Eye, p. 13.
33. Ibid., p. 32.
34. Viktor Shklovskii, quoted in Woroszylski, Mayakovsky,
p. 312.
35. Victor Serge, From Lenin to Stalin, trans. Ralph Manheim
(New York: Monad Press, 1973), pp. 39—40.
22
}6. George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (London: Penguin,
1977). P- 9-
37. K. Miklashevskii, "Hypertrophy in Art," quoted in Larissa
Zhadova, ed., Tatlin, trans. Paul Filotas et al. (London: Thames
and Hudson, 1988), p. 137 n. 35.
38. Vladimir Maiakovskii, quoted in Woroszylski, Mayakovsky,
p. 415.
39. Serge, From Lenin to Stalin, pp. 57-58.
40. S. O. Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko: The Complete Work,
ed. Vieri Quilici, trans. Huw Evans (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1986), p. 99.
41. Osip Brik, quoted ibid., p. 171.
42. Vladimir Tatlin, quoted in Zhadova, Tatlin, p. 143.
43. Vladimir Tatlin, quoted ibid., p. 268.
44. Benjamin, Moscow Diary, p. 11.
45. Serge, From Lenin to Stalin, p. 40.
46. Nikolai Aseev, quoted in Woroszylski, Mayakovsky. p. 299.
47. Alexei Gan, "On the programme and work plan of the
group of Constructivists," quoted in Khan-Magomedov,
Rodchenko, p. 92 n. 14.
48. Vladimir Tatlin, quoted in Zhadova, Tatlin, p. 252.
49. S. Tretyakov, "We Raise the Alarm," in "Documents from
Novy Lef." ed. and trans. Ben Brewster, Screen 12, no. 4 (Winter
1971-72), pp. 6off.
50. Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko. p. 146.
51. See Paul Wood, "Realisms and Realities," in Modern Art:
Practices and Debates, book 3, forthcoming.
52. Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, p. 41.
53. Lev Trotskii, speech to the Twelfth Party Congress,
April 20, 1923, quoted ibid., p. 100.
54. Leon Trotsky, "Toward Capitalism or Socialism?" in
The Challenge of the Left Opposition, ed. Naomi Allen, vol. I
(New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975), p. 322.
55. Tatlin's old rival, Malevich (at this time director of
Ginkhuk), added his voice to the criticism of Tatlin's way of
running his department.
56. Vladimir Tatlin, "Report of the Section for Material
Culture's Work for 1923— 1924" and "Report of the Section for
Material Culture's Research Work for 1924," in Zhadova,
Tatlin, pp. 254—57.
57. Editorial in Sovremennaia arkhitektura 5—6 (1926), quoted in
Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko, p. 207.
58. Vladimir Maiakovskii, statement in discussion on Futurism
with Proletkul't, 1923, quoted in Woroszylski, Mayakovsky,
p. 317.
59. Deutscher, Prophet Unarmed, p. 100.
60. Naomi Allen, introduction to Challenge of the Left
Opposition, vol. 1, p. 35.
61. Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility, p. 3.
62. Ibid., p. 95.
63. Ibid., p. 96.
64. Ibid., p. 100.
65. Leon Trotsky, The Lessons of October, in Challenge of the Left
Opposition, vol. 1, pp. 199-200.
66. Lenin, quoted in Irving Howe, Trotsky (London: Fontana,
1978), p. 79.
67. Allen, introduction to Challenge of the Left Opposition, vol. 1,
p. 29.
68. Reiman, Birth of Stalinism, p. 19.
69. Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility, p. 103.
70. Reiman, Birth of Stalinism, pp. 23-24.
71. The Platform of the Opposition, in Leon Trotsky, The Challenge
of the Left Opposition, ed. Naomi Allen and George Saunders,
vol. 2 (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1980), pp. 302-3.
72. Reiman, Birth of Stalinism, p. 32.
73. Ibid., p. 35.
74. Osip Brik, quoted in Woroszylski, Mayakovsky, pp. 311-12.
75. Benjamin, Moscow Diary, p. 53.
76. Ibid., p. 72.
77. Ibid., p. 112.
78. Vladimir Maiakovskii, quoted in Woroszylski, Mayakovsky,
p. 415.
79. Kino-Eye, p. 48.
80. Vladimir Maiakovskii, quoted in Woroszylski, Mayakovsky,
p. 415.
81. Benjamin, Moscow Diary, p. 15.
82. "Declaration of the Constructivists," in "Documents from
Lef," ed. and trans. Richard Sherwood, Screen 12, no. 4 (Winter
1971-72), pp. 25-58.
83. Benjamin, Moscow Diary, p. 60.
84. This aspect is discussed further in Wood, "Art and Politics
in a Workers State."
85. This is an area fraught with difficulty. Annette Michelson,
in her introduction to Kino-Eye, cites Karl Radek's 1931
criticism of Vertov's Entuziazrn {Symphony of the Donbass). Radek
had been an oppositionist who, since 1928, had thrown in his
lot with the Stalinist bureaucracy. For Michelson, this
conservative political turn, which constitutes "the place and
position from which he was speaking," makes it "hardly an
accident" that Radek was driven to dismiss Vertov's work
(Kino-Eye. p. lviii). The case of Bukharin is interesting and
arguably more complex. He is generally acknowledged to have
been, along with Trotskii and Lunacharskii, one of the main
Bolshevik figures who evinced an interest in and a
sophisticated understanding of artistic developments. Yet
Bukharin became an ally of Stalin's in promoting NEP from its
outset; in the later 1920s, after the defeat of Trotskii, he was
the figurehead of the Right Opposition on whom Stalin next
turned. Initially, however, before the emergence of the splits
under NEP, Bukharin had indeed been perceived as a leader of
the left of the Party. There would be far-reaching implications
for an argument that claimed that the ultimate failure of his
peasant-oriented road to socialism found some prefiguration in
a split between his aesthetics and his politics. Whereas in the
case of the Left Opposition and Lef, although that relation is
never fully articulated (to the detriment, it must be said, of the
political project no less than the artistic one), a passage
remained open: a passage through which there have moved
such tensioned figures as Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht and
23
their descendants in the postwar period who have attempted to
resist both the complete sundering and the complete implosion
of art and politics.
86. Aleksandr Rodchenko, quoted in Khan-Magomedov,
Rodcbenko. p. 115.
87. El Lissitzky, "A. and Pangeometry," in Architecture for World
Revolution, p. 142.
88. Ibid.
89. A brief discussion of October's significance is offered in
Wood, "Realisms and Realities."
90. Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution, trans. Rose Strunsky
(London: RedWords, 1991).
91. Ibid., pp. 181-82.
92. Ibid., p. 50.
93. Nicholas Gorlov, "On Futurisms and Futurism: Concerning
Comrade Trotsky's Article" and Futurism and Revolution, in The
Futurists, The Formalists, and the Marxist Critique, ed.
Christopher Pike, trans. Christopher Pike and Joe Andrew
(London: Ink Links, 1979), pp. 169-80 and 181-242,
respectively.
94. Gerard Conio, preface to Section 3 of Pike, Futurists, p. 162.
95. Gorlov, Futurism and Revolution, in Pike, Futurists, p. 211.
96. Ibid., p. 199.
97. Ibid., p. 211.
98. Margarita Tupitsyn, "Gustav Klutsis: Between Art and
Politics," Art in America, January 1991, pp. 41-47.
99. Bois, "El Lissitzky," p. 167.
100. Ibid., p. 168.
101. Ibid., p. 175.
102. M. M. Litvinov, Deputy People's Commissar of Foreign
Affairs, memorandum to diplomatic representatives of the
USSR, February 9, 1928, reprinted in Reiman, Birth of
Stalinism, pp. 138-42.
103. Reiman, Birth of Stalinism, p. 55.
104. Ibid., p. 86.
105. Callinicos, Revenge of History, p. 32.
106. Stalin, quoted in Hallas, The Comintern, p. 123.
107. Benjamin, Moscow Diary, p. 82.
108. Sovremennaia arkhitektura 3 (1929), quoted in Khan-
Magomedov, Rodchenko, pp. 212-13 n- 4-8-
109. El Lissitzky, "The Club as a Social Force," in Architecture
for World Revolution, p. 44.
no. Ibid., p. 57.
in. Lazar' Kaganovich, quoted in Callinicos, Revenge of History,
P- 35-
112. I have not been able fully to address the relations of
Malevich's work to the political perspective explored in this
essay. Although it is, of course, distinct from Constructivism, I
see no reason to suspect that his work radically violates the
view presented here, at least for the greater part of the period
investigated. His later work, however, does appear to pose
specific problems. The prevailing tendency has been to dismiss
his return to figuration as an oddity or a capitulation to the
burgeoning forces of Social(ist) Realism. Major exhibitions
such as that at the Stedelijk Museum in 1989 have now surely
buried this argument. I address the works briefly in my
"Realisms and Realities"; so, too, does Charles Harrison in his
"Abstraction," in Modern Art: Practices and Debates, book 2,
forthcoming. In political terms, a question remains: what did
it mean that Malevich turned again to depictions of peasant life
at precisely the time of the forced collectivization of
agriculture and the "liquidation of the kulaks as a class," as
Stalinist rhetoric chillingly has it? Whatever the answer to this
question, a recently published letter of April 8, 1932, from
Malevich to Vsevolod Meierkhol'd makes clear that for him the
return to figuration was not a break with the Revolution but a
way of safeguarding it and preventing the return of Classicism
and Naturalism:
Painting has turned back from the non-objective way to the object,
and the development of painting has returned to the figurative part of
the way that had led to the destruction of the object. But on the way
back, painting came across a new object that the proletarian revolution
had brought to the fore and which had to be given form, which means
that it had to be raised to the level of a work of art . . . I am utterly
convinced that if you keep to the way of Constructivism, where you are
now firmly stuck, which raises not one artistic issue except for pure
utilitarianism and in theatre simple agitation, which may be one
hundred per cent consistent ideologically but is completely castrated as
regards artistic problems, and forfeits half its value. If you go on as
you are . . . then Stanislavski will emerge as the winner in the theatre
and the old forms will survive. And as to architecture, if the architects
do not produce artistic architecture, the Greco-Roman style of
Zyeltovski will prevail, together with the Repin style in painting
(Kazimir Malevich, "Two Letters to Meyerhold, " Kunst &
Museumjournaal 6 {1990}. pp. p-10).
113. Vladimir Maiakovskii, quoted in Christopher Pike,
introduction to Futurists, p. 19.
114. Walter Benjamin, letter to Gershom Scholem, April 17,
1931, in Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin: The Story of a
Friendship, trans. Harry Zohn (London: Faber, 1982), pp. 231—33.
115. El Lissitzky, "Housing Communes," in Architecture for
World Revolution, p. 42.
24
The Artisan and the
Prophet: Marginal
Notes on Two Artistic
Careers
Vasilii Rakitin
Which is worth more: wind or stone/
They're both price/ess.
— Aleksei Krnchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov
The epic literatures of many peoples, in both East and West,
feature sagas in which two heroes, equal in prowess, are pitted
against each other. Valiant warriors on both sides watch their
duel with bated breath . . .
The first of two events that determined the fate of art for a
long time to come — and not just in Russia but in many other
countries — took place in Moscow in the spring of 1914:
Dear Sirs,
On the 10th, nth, 12th, 13th, and 14th of May this year the studio
of Vladimir Tat/in ( 57 Ostozhenka, apartment 3) will be open from 6
to 8 p.m. for a free viewing of his synthetic-static compositions. In
addition, at seven o'clock on the aforementioned days, the Futurist
Sergei Podgaevskii will dynamically declaim his latest poetic
transrational records. '
A hand-lettered placard mounted above the entrance to the
apartment proclaimed: behold the TRICK!
Podgaevskii could not simply read his verses — he had to
"dynamically declaim" them. And they were not even verses,
either, but "poetic transrational records." The choice of words
is indicative of a change of mood in Moscow artistic circles, of
a gravitation toward the transrational and the alogical. Toward
Dada in place of Futurism.
Tatlin used metallic netting and smoked glass in one of the
compositions on display, which people claimed was a depiction
of a "tearoom at night."1 They were, however, hard pressed to
say what was represented in the other "synthetic-static" works,
which had been hung alongside Tatlin's beautiful and perfectly
legible set and costume designs lor Mikhail Glinka's opera
Zhizn' za tsaria (A Life for the Czar, 1836). (The 1913-14 Mir
iskusstva [World of Art} exhibitions at which these designs
had been displayed' coincided with celebrations in Moscow and
St. Petersburg of the tricentenary of the Romanov dynasty —
celebrations which were themselves operatic in their
grandeur.)4 Observers today wish to see a connection between
Tatlin's Les (Forest, 1913) design for Glinka's opera and his first
reliefs. But the break between them is obvious. There is no
smooth transition. Tatlin took not a step but a leap into the
unknown.
Nonetheless, Tatlin, with childlike cunning, continued to
try to convince the public that there was no particular
difference between his new work and old — although he did
fear he would not be believed. In December 1914, he was
invited to contribute as a member of World of Art to the
Khudozhniki Moskvy — zhertvam voiny {Artists of Moscow for the
Victims of the War) exhibition, where again he showed his
designs for A Life for the Czar. Yet two or three hours prior to
the opening, he arrived with his Zhivopisnyi rel'ef (Painterly
Relief. 1914) — a composition of wire, iron, cardboard, and
enamel on board — and proceeded to hang it as if that were
nothing out of the ordinary. The organizers endeavored to
remove the relief from the exhibition — such an eccentric
prank, such an aesthetic curiosity, did not suit a flag-waving,
patriotic exhibition! Thanks, however, to the insistence of
several other artists — and because spectators had already begun
to filter into the exhibition halls — Tatlin's relief was allowed to
remain/
The following year, Sergei Shchukin, one of the most
significant collectors of the new painting, bought a relief by
Tatlin out of the Tramvai V (Tramway V) exhibition in
Petrograd, paying what seemed to Russian artists a fantastic
price — three thousand rubles.6 For that amount of money one
could purchase fifteen to twenty landscapes by the enterprising
"father of Russian Futurism," David Burliuk, or two or three
splendid paintings by one of the most popular and prominent
25
artists of the time, Kuz'ma Petrov-Vodkin. Amazement
bordered on shock. What was the secret of a few boards and
pieces of iron and wire, all of which could be found in any barn
or garbage dump?
In the late autumn of 1915, another artist in Moscow,
Kazimir Malevich, was attempting to convince his colleagues
in Futurist and Dada happenings to gather "under a new
banner."" He proposed that the poets of yesterday's Futurism
"change the means of battle with thought, content, and
logic . . . advance Alogism after Futurism" — in essence, that
they learn from the example of his Alogist paintings. Malevich
even provided examples of his own of the new poetic
structures:
Papuans bored, but
Cottage second-class
Ticket. Park. Arch.
These lines loosely match his painting Stantsiia bez ostanovki.
Kuntsevo {Through Station: Kuntsevo, 1913, fig. no. 2), while
another of Malevich's examples brings to mind his Korova i
skripka (Cow and Violin, 1913), sometimes called Vids balkona
(View from the Balcony):
The cow ate a palm
Alma-Tadema
Adam Goat Goose. *
It was evident that all the innovators in painting were "no
longer Futurists"9 and that "Futurism" had survived only as a
general notion useful in dealing with a public accustomed to
the labeling of everything new and up to the minute as
"Futurist." The participants in the ft 10 exhibition, held in
Nadezhda Dobychina's gallery in Petrograd in 1915-16, called
the show the "last Futurist exhibition" — the last that the
artists striving to attain "zero form" wanted. Yet the Magazin
(The Store) exhibition, organized by Tatlin and held in Moscow
in 1916, would be called "Futurist." And during the Civil War
years, "Futurism" would once again be a synonym for
everything new, leading an exasperated Lenin to cry, "Can we
not find any reliable anti-Futurists!"10
The true manifesto of the new movement in painting —
Suprematism — was neither the leaflet with a statement by
Malevich distributed at the 0. 10 exhibition" nor the speeches he
gave at debates and lectures nor even his polemical treatise Ot
kubizma k suprematizmu (From Cubism to Suprematism)^ an
eccentric experiment in philosophical prose, but Malevich's
Chernyi kvadrat (Black Square, 1915) itself, his "icon."
The icon is a sign of the other world, of sacred harmony,
and a witness to higher spiritual values. But the majority of
Malevich's followers, raised on the Futurists' irreverent attacks
on the old and obsolete, did not immediately comprehend the
iconic meaning of the Black Square. Malevich's detractors
proved to be more insightful. They intuitively understood the
historic importance of Malevich's gesture — he hung the Black
Square at the 0.10 exhibition in the traditional place of the
icon — yet, in their holy terror, they confused the new harmony
and new artistic idealism with the march of the "oncoming
boor.""
"We are all primitives of the twentieth century," announced
Ivan Kliun.'4 He used the word "primitive" in reference not to
Primitivism, the stylistic tendency prevalent in the early 1910s,
but to the beginning of a new era in the evolution of art and to
vanguard artists as bearers of a new artistic consciousness,
powerful and whole. Tatlin's reliefs and Malevich's
Suprematism were the most important stimuli in the self-
determination of other avant-garde artists, who were not
troubled by the divergence and even the glaring contradiction
between Tatlin's and Malevich's paths. In order to clarify their
own tasks, it was important that artists define themselves in
relation to the new concepts. Formal innovation acted in and of
itself, provoking argument, elucidation, and refutation. It was,
that is, an aesthetic provocation, a challenge.
Thus Liubov' Popova and Kliun countered Tatlin with their
own variations on the relief, admixing Tatlin's experiments and
the "sculpto-paintings" of Aleksandr Arkhipenko and, in
Popova's case, the work of the Italian Futurists Umberto
Boccioni and Ardengo Soffici, as well; in Petrograd, Lev Brum
made reliefs influenced by Tatlin. What was at stake here, of
course, was not the affirmation of the spatial relief as a special
new genre — the reliefs of Vladimir Burliuk, Kliun, and Vasilii
Ermilov (who produced reliefs in Khar'kov in the early 1920s)
were based upon different principles. Rather, Tatlin's reliefs
acted as conduits to new spatial concepts and to a gradual
recognition of a new attitude toward art in general.
Many artists — such as Ivan Puni, Popova, Aleksandr
Rodchenko, and Ol'ga Rozanova (whose works were frequently
entitled Suprematizm [Suprematism] in exhibition catalogues) —
experienced Malevich's Suprematism as if it were an
inoculation against the disease of illusionism and Naturalism,
and then quickly went beyond it. After the February
Revolution of 1917, the artists of Supremus — a group centered
around Malevich in Moscow in 1916— 17, which had planned,
but was never able, to publish a journal of the same name —
joined the so-called young or left federation of the Moscow
Professional Union of Artists and Painters. And by 1920,
Malevich's solo show at the Sixteenth State Exhibition in
Moscow was essentially the exhibition of a living classic.
No one among Suprematism's "fellow travelers" had any
desire, as Malevich wished they did, to develop specifically
Suprematist principles further. The independence of each artist
from the general rubric was clear to all the participants, bar
none, in Suprematist ventures. Thus Varvara Stepanova
observed bluntly that "Rozanova's Suprematism is contrary to
that of Malevich . . . For Malevich, color exists solely to
distinguish one plane from another; for Rozanova, the
composition serves to reveal all the possibilities of color on a
plane." She took particular note of the "minimalism" of
Rozanova's most recent work, where "one color [develops] into
a self-sufficient painting."" Even the seemingly orthodox
Suprematist Kliun quickly changed tack, searching out his
own concepts of abstract form and constructing his
compositions on the interrelation of color and light (on the
change in color wrought by light and contrasts, and the
influence of adjacent colors on the alteration of form).
Tatlin's reliefs and Malevich's Black Square introduced a new
artistic yardstick. Competition with the Paris school, which
had been the main engine in the evolution of new Russian art
circa 1910, lost its meaning.
In about 1920, it would "suddenly" become evident that
changes had taken place or were in the offing in many
countries — that the scale of artistic values was shifting.
Parisian artists would respond to the crisis with Purism and
the aesthetics of Le Corbusier, and later with Surrealism. For
the time being, however, the signal events were those
occurring to the east of Paris. In Moscow and Petrograd, in
Holland and Germany, and in Eastern Europe, artists were not
only promoting but in their own way transforming new ideas.
The Bauhaus, with a minimum of rhetoric, with "workmanlike
efficiency," so to speak, for a time resolved all real and
imagined conflicts and contradictions — between "free creative
work" and society's claim on the artist's work; between logic
and rationalism and spontaneity and intuition; between
26
technology and metaphysics — in its notion of a "total art" in
active relation with its surroundings. In the 1920s, the question
of "epoch and style" was not merely theoretical. And in the art
of this period, Malevich and Tatlin are constantly the twin
catalysts.
The world as a sense, independent of the image, of the idea — this is
the essence of the content of art. {My} square is not an image, just as a
switch or socket are not the current.
— Malevich'6
By the time Tallin's reliefs and Suprematism appeared, a
certain stage in the evolution of the new Russian art had come
full circle — a stage that, according to Malevich, was initiated
by those now seemingly happy and carefree sensualists, the
Impressionists. Vanguard Russian artists especially esteemed
Claude Monet, whom they perceived — as they did Cezanne
and Van Gogh, and later Picasso — as "more Russian than the
Russians." Those in Malevich's circle were always and
unreservedly admirers of Fernand Leger, while Tatlin prized the
lyrical Impressionism of Mikhail Larionov, which combined
virtuosity with sincere feeling.
Cubism taught discipline of form and fostered a taste for
analysis. It was, for Malevich, the pivotal — or, better yet,
central — event in painting's evolution from Impressionism to
Suprematism. Among the slogans of Malevich's students — the
members of Unovis (the Affirmers of the New Art) — in
Vitebsk were the following:
If you want to study art, study Cubism!
You want to learn painting? Begin with Cubism!
If you don't want to become a fashionable painter, begin by
studying Cubism!
If you are an artist and do not work cubist ically, then begin
working this way immediately!
You want to experience the beauty of the fourth dimension? Begin
studying Cubism!
If you want to become a creator, study Cubism!
Do you want to reign over nature? Study Cubism!
If you don't want to be ruled by nature, begin studying Cubism!'7
In other words, there was no way to become a contemporary
artist without first passing through Cubism.
For Tatlin, Cubism was something worth knowing, yet he
evinced no desire to adopt it. Nor, however, did he feel any
need to reject it — he was, of course, far from concurring with
Felix Vallotton's celebrated utterance: "Cezanne? I choose, with
all due respect, to ignore him." In the studio on Ostozhenka,
which Tatlin rented with the artist Nikolai Rogovin, he drew
nudes in the style of Cubism (whenever other artists
congregated and they were able to hire a model). Many such
studies remain, in albums and even on loose sheets of paper.
But no Cubism was allowed into his painting — no
variations on the paintings in Shchukin's gallery or those
illustrated in magazines. Tatlin's devices for deforming nature
(devices as important to Expressionism as to Cubism), his
"distortions," had more in common with the violation of
perspective in icons (but not in primitive art) than with the
canvases of the Parisian painters. (It was precisely in 1911— 12
that the "antiquity" of the vanguard art of Tatlin became
manifest.)
And Futurism? For Malevich and Tatlin, its reign was a
time when artistic life itself became a work of art.
Malevich entertained long and seriously both the idea of
dynamism and the linked notion of art as pure energy. "I paint
energy, not the soul."'8 Energy and the energetics of tension are
subjects ever present in his reflections on art — though he
fig. I
Vladimir Tatlin
Counter-Relief, ca. ipiti
fig. 2
Kazimir Malevich
Through Station: Kuntsevo, ipij.
27
invests these concepts with his own meaning, viewing both
dynamism and energy from the vantage point of absolute art.
In first describing his reliefs as "synthetic-static
compositions," Tatlin emphasized their non-Futurist character.
Alogism formed a sort of neutral zone between the trends of
the early 1910s and non-objective art and Constructivism.
Tatlin contented himself with hanging the behold the trick:
placard, while Malevich (if one isn't blindly accepting the
suggestions embedded in his own writings) found himself at a
turning point. A turning point to nowhere, and then to "his"
Suprematism, of far greater importance than Cubism. Irony for
a time allowed the question, Where next? to remain
unanswered; it permitted a second's breathing space in the
uninterrupted pursuit of new forms. Alogism offered
everything — Cubism's geometric planes, Futurism's
strangeness and urban kitsch (lettering from advertisements
and signboards) — immediately and simultaneously. It was
harmony in disharmony. Not synthesis, not the birth pangs of a
Gesamtkunstwerk but a backed-up stream of artistic reflexes and
utterances vis-a-vis contemporary devices and concepts in art.
Today we can trace an entirely logical path from Alogism to
the montage of the 1920s.
In Malevich's case it was also significant that the Alogist
estrangement of meaning encouraged scrutiny of the structure
of the painting; it revealed the "pure element" of form: the
surface plane.
Of course, Malevich, in passionately absorbing each ism,
failed to notice that he was parodying them. The parody
evolved from his desire to do everything not only better but
absolutely right. He was a born systematist; he had to model
everything into his own — and, in his opinion, faultlessly
exact — world of Impressionism, Cezannism, and Cubism. And
if everything was to be exact and complete, he had to circle
back and to reexamine himself again and again. Hence it
seemed to him, after he had completed his own series of Cubist
experiments, that no one in Russia had yet created a truly
Cubist work. But, had he worked in France, would he have
found a Parisian artist who had?
Malevich's Alogist works, like things an sich, are products
of the disengagement of form from the objects of perception.
These works operate on two levels, that of abstract planes
concealing some unknown world and that of irony vis-a-vis the
subject that is possibly depicted.
Suprematism liberated these disengaged planes and
endowed them with new meaning. New form engendered, or
predetermined, new meaning.
This was the winding-up of the old (although the "old" was
not very long out of its infancy) and the beginning of the new.
Tatlin navigated among the various isms in art like an
icebreaker threading a path among floes that threaten to crush
it. His was the most logical and the most unforeseen
solution — to make not life but the materials existing in life
both the subject of art and art itself.
He saw no need to repudiate anything. The polemical
debates about art were of no special interest to Tatlin, and not
because he wasn't one for talking — he was, in fact, a first-rate
raconteur — but because he discerned no particular sense in
them. Tatlin was a naturalist, the keenest of observers, who did
reject willful intervention. He proceeded "from the bottom
up," not from a general idea — the fourth, fifth, sixth, or
whatever dimension — but from the life of materials. From the
life of materials, and not from materials as such.
Materials have properties such as elasticity, weight, and
tension. Line, tone, and color. Old photographs of the reliefs —
without the retouching that each time cancels a little more of
the complexity of their structure — reveal a subtlety oifaktura
(density or manipulation of material) and light and shade. The
attainments of painting have not been lost. The refinement and
intricacy of the linear-rhythmical relationships of painting are,
rather, preserved. The riddle of Tatlin's reliefs, unsolved by
those in both East and West who have reconstructed them, is
how emptiness became an artistic space, how it acquired a
subtle poetic meaning.
Tatlin's reliefs embodied a new artistic methodology: the
aesthetics of real materials in real space (naturally, both these
concepts change, and constantly, over time and space). Tatlin's
conversations with young artists from the Apartment No. 5
studio on Vasil'evskii Island in Petrograd, and with the critics
Sergei Isakov and Nikolai Punin, led to the following, entirely
logical, formulae:'9
spectrum
Impressionism
Cezannism
Cubism
Tatlin (and Tatlinism)
power of color
quality of color
composition of form
faktura
consistent composition
material
real space
And so, a new sign and a new reality.
Two faces of the age.
More accurately, a new life in art for the real. At the beginning,
even Tatlin, it appears, did not fully grasp the significance of
what he had discovered. It was no big deal. Every artist loves
his material. No mere board but "a lovely little one," Tatlin
would say. What unusual discoveries were there here? What
art? Even in the booklet Vladimir Evgrafovich Tatlin, published
at the height of art-world polemicizing, we find no theories —
not even their facsimile — no manifesto, no ripostes. Only a
decidedly straightforward biographical note and reproductions
of his works.20 An account of work produced between this date
and that. Look for yourself and draw your own conclusions.
Just as El Lissitzky said later in his Suprematicheskii skaz pro dva
kvadrata (A Suprematist Tale about Two Squares, 1922):
"Construct yourselves."
Vera Pestel1, who dedicated her painting Tatlin s banduroi
{Tatlin with Bandura)1' to Tatlin, writes ingenuously in her
memoirs about how much she, Sofia Karetnikova, Popova, and
Nadezhda Udal'tsova liked Malevich's bright and cheerful
geometric paintings. Pestel1 and the others made decorative
sketches in the Suprematist style for the Verbovka collective,
whose peasant women embroidered scarves, handbags, muffs,
and carpets with these designs." And the four artists even
decorated the club of the left federation of the Moscow
Professional Union of Artists and Painters with Suprematist
designs.2'
Malevich's formation of the Supremus group, which good
friends of Tatlin's and former admirers of his art (Udal'tsova
and Pestel1 again) either joined or associated with, was, of
course, a blow to Tatlin's pride as an artist. This despite the
fact that both Malevich's formal investigations and his
strategems to inaugurate a movement were foreign to Tatlin, as
if from another planet.
The stories recounted by Pestel1, Valentina Khodasevich,24
28
and Sofia Dymshits-Tolstaia,:s who knew Tatlin well (but not
each other), paint a picture — full of sympathy — of a "holy fool
of Futurism," a man suspicious to the point of absurdity, to the
brink of phobia. He openly suspected Malevich of artistic
espionage, though it is difficult today to detect the traces of
any crime. Tatlin erected something like a tent, but one that
could be locked, in the middle of his studio on Staro-
Basmannaia Street in the Nemetskaia sloboda region of
Moscow. God forbid Malevich should see what he was up to
and get ahead of him.
This is a continuation, as it were, of the old "futurization"
of artistic life. What happens in art and the stories told about
it are artistic facts of identical interest. History immediately
decks itself out as myth.
Tatlin's "phobia" was clearly provoked by Malevich, who
derived satisfaction from mystifications and practical jokes.
Tatlin, of course, also liked to tell tales. They always contained,
it's true, a kernel of truth, yet the accounts of his journeys and
adventures changed and were embroidered with each retelling.
Did he, pretending to be a blind man, play his bandura at an
exhibition of Russian art and handicrafts in Berlin in the
winter of 1914? He did. And did he speak with and kiss the
hand of the Kaiser's wife? Those who heard his captivating
tales did not much care whether, in fact, he had. Had he been
in Paris? He had. The sculptor and later art historian Boris
Ternovets,2" the sculptor Vera Mukhina/" and Jacques Lipchitz28
all recalled Tatlin's traveling to France after his "stint" playing
the bandura in Berlin. In her diary, Popova recorded Tatlin's
story about how, right before his departure from Paris for
Moscow, he visited "Pavel" Picasso himself (Russians liked to
switch from the Spanish name to its Slavic equivalent).29 After
seeing Picasso's Cubist constructions, Tatlin said, he began to
work according to other principles.
fig- 3
Vera Pestel'
Composition, ipi$—iti
Malevich's mystifications were of a different variety. He
matched Baron Munchausen in flights of fantasy and
inspiration. A simple photograph. The artist with a Polish
acquaintance in Germany.'0 Two figures. On the back is the
inscription: "Le Corbusier and me in Dessau." Malevich was
certainly in danger of being found out, yet the very act of
rewriting the history of contemporary art afforded so much
pleasure. And why wouldn't Le Corbusier have come and
offered a salute to the renowned Kazimir from the city of
Petrograd?
As a polemicist, Malevich remained a man of the Futurist
era and its romantic mythology. In one of his letters from
Vitebsk to David Shterenberg in Moscow — a letter written in
1921, when the organization of the Erste russiscbe Kunstausstellung
{First Russian Art Exhibition, Berlin, 1922) was only beginning
to be discussed — Malevich took pains to emphasize that he was
an ideological worker in art. And that the Berlin exhibition
would be of interest to him only if his "icons" — the Black
Square, Chernyi kri/g {Black Circle), and Cbernyi krest {Black
Cross) — were exhibited. And exhibited only, moreover, under
the rubric Suprernatizrn. Rossiia. 1913 {Suprematism: Russia, 1913)"
Nineteen thirteen? By now this date has been quoted any
number of times." As if Suprematism's having in fact emerged
somewhat later than 1913 could diminish its significance in the
history of twentieth-century art and discredit it in its own
eyes. To be sure, many such "improved chronologies" have been
discovered and will continue to be discovered in accounts of
the art of this century. Yet Malevich, who was a genius at
hypnosis, convinced not only everyone else but even himself
that he had inaugurated Suprematism in 1913 — and not in any
other year. His account of his own career is full of datings of
works according not to the year in which they were produced
but the year in which they were conceived."
29
The opera Pobeda nad solntsem (Victory over the Sun, 1913) was,
of course, a major event in the history of Russian Dadaism. But
in the history of Suprematism? All attempts to read the origins
of Suprematism in Malevich's fortuitous and rather banal set
design for the opera (the square in his sketch of the curtain was
a form virtually foreordained by the box shape of the stage)
reiterate Malevich's own carefully planted suggestion. He
caught a lot offish with this line. Though that certainly casts
no shadow on the historic importance of Suprematism.
Malevich's mystifications not infrequently force one to
scrutinize his works and principles more closely.
The young artists in Vitebsk and Smolensk, at the most
fifteen to eighteen years old, asked Malevich about the origins
of the first Suprematist works and of the Black Square.
Malevich improvised brilliantly. Using the principle of
analogy. According to a famous anecdote in the history of
nineteenth-century Russian art, the prominent historical
painter Vasilii Surikov could not, no matter how he tried, get
the coloring he wanted in his painting The Boyarina Morozova
(1887) until he saw the solution in life: a black crow on white
snow. Thus Malevich told his students this story: one day,
following a spate of inclement weather — at the time he was
living in Moscow, in the Sokol'niki district, in a house rented
by Kliun — he went to the window and was stunned by the
contrast between the freshly fallen, blindingly white snow and
the black knapsack on the back of a boy leaving the house for
school. Even if the story was a complete fabrication, it was
spectacularly convincing.'4 Malevich wrote to Mikhail
Matiushin to announce his fevralizm (Februaryism) in
painting." So what if the absurdly (like so many other of his
works shown at the o. 10 exhibition) entitled Zhivopisnyi realizm
mal'chika s rantsem {Painterly Realism of a Boy with Knapsack,
1915) is not a black square but a composition of two squares —
one large and one small?'6
Such anecdotes, worthy of Vasari, only confirm the role
played by emotional impulse.
Iron, glass, and marble. Malevich, as a man with a refined
artistic sensibility, could not have remained oblivious to the
originality of Tatlin's works. Yet if Suprematism was the end-
all and be-all of contemporary painting's evolution from
Impressionism, if it was the single truth, the existence of
Tatlin put the problem on a different plane, namely: where is
the truth;'
Tatlin? It was impossible not to notice him. Just as it was
impossible not to recognize his talent. And Malevich — the
polemicist and "solipsist" of innovation — asked his students
and followers to repeat after him: Tatlin does not transcend the
confines of Cubism.'7 He represents only a stage in the
evolution of Cubism. Variations rather than repetition, maybe,
still not true innovation. You must go forward — follow me —
onward to the new harmony. One of Malevich's students in
Vitebsk, marching in step with the cult of the great leader
promoted from above, even thought up a slogan: "Long live
Unovis — the path to a Suprematist future — and long live
Kazimir Malevich, the true guide along this path!"'8
For Tatlin, however, "iron blocked the horizon."'9 And his
task was to "rupture the ring of the horizon."
Malevich was born a prophet, mystifier, leader, and artistic
dictator. And he was very human; he often endured
humiliations4" and had learned how to find his way out of any
situation. In Petrograd in the 1920s, for example, confronted
by complete repudiation of his art, he conceived a kind of
applied research, the "science of art," to which he summoned
vanguard artists now bereft of social standing.
For Tatlin, being an artist was never too complicated. He
was not the leader of any movement or group, nor did he yearn
to be such, even if he did enjoy indisputable authority among
art professionals, both vanguard and not.4' He was not overly
impressed by the fine artistic intuition that nature had given
him. It seemed a given, like a good ear for a musician. And
others had the same gift. The sharpness and precision of the eye
was the most important thing. Absolutely no approximations
or imitations of artistic impression. Visual perception meant
the eye's tactile sensation of every portion of a work. Sight,
therefore, had to be put under the control of touch.42
The eye both sees and touches the work. It sees and feels the
painting-like warmth of tone of the wood, the elasticity and
tension of the iron, the cable giving under the iron's weight.
Every rhythm of form. The light and shadows of every facet of
the relief. Aesthetics resides in the "selection of materials," in
the fit of their contradictions. Precious mahogany and
palisander, for example, are conjoined with an ordinary piece of
iron used for roofing and drainpipes. The relief — to quote
Vladimir Maiakovskii's verse — is "a nocturne on a drainpipe
flute."
In Tatlin's Doska No. 1 {Board No. 1) of the winter of
1916-17, wood and paint combine to create a play of color
halftones, interstices, and transitions. In its power and subtlety,
this work is comparable to the masterpieces of icon painting.
Tatlin was born to make plastic art, nature, and technology
into one great new whole. He was not a man of particularly
wide intellectual interests. Malevich's philosophical prose
summons numerous associations with the philosophy of writers
whom he not only had not read (though he had, for example,
read Schopenhauer) but of whom he had not even heard. Tatlin
didn't provide such a goldmine of self-sufficient intellectual
constructs. But he did have a broad grasp of the problem. In
his work, material and space strove to become absolutely
perfect categories. Material lives a profoundly organic life, it
embraces life in its entirety as a new system of the senses.
Everything is perfected. But Tatlin's was not the notion —
which had given academic painters no peace — of the
masterpiece as such. It was, rather, the idea of absolute plastic
harmony, in which artisanry and the senses are inseparable. In
this regard, Tatlin — poorly educated, lacking any desire to
assert himself through polemical jousting, a classic outsider —
had more in common with the brilliant Renaissance
intellectual, Leonardo da Vinci, than with any artist of his own
time . . .
And yet, why did the outsider Tatlin enter the legendary
battle with Malevich? What was at stake?
Let us note: Tatlin, speaking about his Tower — his
"dynamo-form" — declared iron and glass the "materials of the
new Classicism."4'
On the one hand, he proceeded, as always, from the nature
of materials. And here his reasoning dovetailed with the logic
of architects designing industrial structures: "In reinforced
concrete we have not only a new material but, of far greater
consequence, new constructions and a new method for
designing buildings. Therefore, in using [reinforced concrete],
we have to renounce the old traditions and concern ourselves
with meeting new tasks."44 Let us also note that Tatlin began to
work on his Tower at the same time as construction
commenced on the engineer Vladimir Shukhov's radio tower in
Moscow. (The radio tower, as originally envisioned, was to
reach a height of 350 meters.)45
On the other hand, Tatlin invested the phrase "materials of
the new Classicism" with an artistic significance. A definition
of new canons of form with the aid of new materials.
In Petrograd in 1923, Malevich's student, Il'ia Chashnik,
completed a study for the cover of the never-published
Suprematizm kak novyi klassitsizm {Suprematism as the New
Classicism).^ Slogans like "Back to Ingres!" weren't at issue, but
30
rather, once again, a definition of new long-term laws for the
construction of form.
We must conclude, returning to the rivalry between
Malevich and Tatlin, that theirs was a contest not over
leadership but over truth — over which path in contemporary
art was the true one. Malevich, otherwise a diplomat and
pragmatist, was in no mood for conciliation on this score.
While Tatlin, according to the memoirs of Punin (who
endeavored in a variety of circumstances to reconcile Tatlin to
reality), was incapable of compromise in almost any situation.4
Tatlin's entire life, as a matter of fact, confirms this assertion.
History does not wait. It lays down an ultimatum.
-Pitirim Sorokin"g
The Civil War presented both vanguard artists with a dramatic
dilemma.
The new art had been born of the struggle for a self-
sufficient artistic language and a non-objective artistic world.
Now the state wanted to make art a mere vehicle for agitprop,49
to limit it to an educational function — to illustration of the
requisite slogans and notions. What was important to the new
state was "not to carry out a revolution in art (which is
impossible) but to put art at the service of the revolution."*0
These words were repeated by Party cultural functionaries from
one year to the next, and almost verbatim.
Malevich and Tatlin had different — yet, in some sense,
similar — reactions to this development.
"Decoration of the city for revolutionary festivities" — this
neutral bookkeeper's formulation on an invoice fit the
superrevolutionary decoration of Vitebsk to a tee, until the
authorities understood that the propaganda effect of this work
was nonexistent, if not negative. In all honesty, who, finding
himself in a strange and joyous world of particolored planes,
was about to mull over revolution and counterrevolution?
These decorations were experiments in a new mural painting,
experiments in Suprematist design, yet the words and agitprop
phrases incorporated in them were incidental and ineffective.
Why is the beautiful composition of colored planes on Nikolai
Suetin's panel accompanied by the slogan "Religion is the
opium of the people"? Which religion? What opium? And
what people — drug addicts, perhaps? The man on the street
could hardly have cared less. Some people were stopped by the
vividness of the colors. Others jumped back from the strange
combinations of geometric forms out of a textbook. Did people
stand before Lissitzky's poster Klinom krasnym bei belykh (Beat
the Whites with the Red Wedge. 1920, plate no. 138) and decipher
its symbolism? Only the dynamics of its composition made any
impression.
Examining agitprop art from such a "bourgeois,"
consumerist vantage helps one comprehend the "aesthetic
scissors," that is, the divergent blades of the artist's interest in
working in an urban space and his obvious (in many cases)
indifference to the tasks of abstract propaganda.
As one of the leaders at the Moscow Art Board of Izo
Narkompros (the Department of Fine Arts of the People's
Commissariat of Enlightenment), Tatlin was privy to efforts to
carry out the so-called Plan for Monumental Propaganda —
monuments to progressive revolutionary and cultural figures of
the past. Several of the names on the list of candidates drawn
up by the intellectuals were crossed out "at the top." Without
discussion. Case closed. The philosopher Vladimir Solov'ev, for
instance, and Cezanne, a classic in the eyes of new artists in
Moscow. Documents that might reveal how the Art Board
reacted to Cezanne's removal from the list have not, it seems,
survived. (In 1920, the art club at Vkhutemas [the Higher
Artistic-Technical Workshops] would be named the Cezanne
fig- 4
Nikolai Prusakov
Study for a Stove, 1920.
31
Club.) Yet it is clear that this mechanical approach to the task
at hand and treatment of monuments as illustrations on an
assigned theme did not suit Tatlin at all. "Monumental
propaganda" might just as well have been called "sculptural
propaganda.""
Tatlin's Tower was conceived in direct argument with the
Plan for Monumental Propaganda and the manner in which it
was slated to be implemented. In order to work on his project,
Tatlin had to leave Moscow in 1919 for Petrograd, where, with
Punin's help, he managed to get a modest subsidy, materials,
and a place to work: the former mosaics workshop of the
Academy of Fine Arts. The workshop's former director, the
ceramicist Petr Vaulin, protested. Now was the very time to be
thinking about "erecting houses and temples of the people,
decorated with mosaics."" He had no idea that Tatlin was
occupied with a similarly impractical project. The Tower was
one in a series, stretching far back in history and culture, of
architectural constructions that were monuments and icons of
their age. A series that began with the legendary Tower of
Babel and included, in Russia, the church in the village of
Kolomenskoe outside Moscow and (a later addition) the
Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow, erected to mark the
defeat of Napoleon."
The spirals of the Tower, like serpentine mountain roads,
energetically wound their way up into "Malevich's heavens."
The Tower's abstract, cosmic symbolizing of perception lent
its functional intentions a particular cast. It was made "from
iron, glass, and revolution," but also from reverie, hunger, and
isolation. The Tower might possibly house a cafeteria — a
dream in a time when food was scarce — and studios for artists,
too. In it, the dynamism of life acquired the solemnity of a
chorale. A monument in half-frozen and half-deserted
Petrograd, a monument on the banks of the Lethe — built for
no specific city, for no specific country. A monument to the
ruin of the times and a monument to the spirit of absolute
freedom.
The world had collapsed and the world lived.
It was both the creation of the artist and the voice of
history.
"An absurd and naive, monstrous beast with a radio-
telegraph horn on its head and the legislative assembly of the
Third International in its belly"?v'
"The Council of People's Commissars would flee from such
a building on the first sunny day and, camped out nearby on
the grass, would immediately issue a decree that Tatlin's tower
is for rent, at public auction, to horticulturists wishing to grow
pineapples.""
The Tower was a sign and symbol not of revolutionary
Russia but of the new era in its entirety.
Tatlin's Tower was immediately perceived and adopted by
artists in the 1920s as the sign of a new artistic consciousness,
not as a monument to the Third International. What was the
connotation of "Third International" for Tatlin? A common
phrase of the Civil War period. At the time, Izo Narkompros,
for example, was planning to publish (but never did) a
multilingual journal entitled Internatsional iskusstva (Art
International). Both Tatlin and Malevich prepared texts for it,
Tatlin's contribution consisting of clear, extremely brief
"theses. '"''' The artists' International denoted not establishment
of a Bolshevik dictatorship all over the globe but lifting of the
curse of disunion from humanity.
There were few who found the Tower to produce an
agitprop effect any more persuasive that of the Suprematist
panels. This was no targeted attack of the sort found in Sergei
Eizenshtein's films.
When the model of the Tower was first exhibited, in
Petrograd in November 1920, the opening — which was called,
as the idiom of the time dictated, a meeting — was attended by
stunned representatives of the Petrograd art world, astonished
at what they beheld, and — for form's sake; after all, it was a
meeting — by a handful of sailors and Red Army soldiers. In
December the model was exhibited in Moscow at the Eighth
Congress of Soviets; it was displayed among diagrams, posters,
and other types of agitprop and didactic production at the
former Association of the Nobility. Pavel Mansurov, the young
non-objective artist from Petrograd who designed the
exhibition, did a good job of "serving up" Tatlin. But the
delegates didn't bite. The Tower unleashed a storm at a
discussion of the model at Vkhutemas's Cezanne Club. There
both Naum Gabo and Lissitzky argued for it as the most
concrete of architectural projects, which needed to be realized
not so much today as tomorrow.57 Both would eventually do a
great deal to popularize the Tower in the West.
A version of the model was displayed — as if it were a
standard agitprop object, like the inevitable bust of Lenin — at
the Exposition internationale des arts decoratifs et industriels
modernes (International Exhibition of Contemporary Decorative and
Industrial Art) in Paris in 1925. And at the Voina v iskusstve (War
in Art) exhibition in Leningrad in 1930. After which the model
was dismantled and stored away somewhere. With time, all of
its parts were lost. A section of one of its spirals was used for a
brief period as a ladder.
Balanced, "middle-of-the-road" opinions were virtually
absent in the first debates about the Tower. Either a work of
genius or a nonentity. The years of engage Realism, it would
seem, resolved the impasse in favor of nonentity.
One modest informant about the debate over the Tower
reported: "If the idea of the monument is truly new and
valuable, then it will never die. Prophets have not always been
stoned and imposters have not always succeeded."'8
Others left {Russia}, but as it turned out, those who stayed on had
also left.
— Vladimir Veidle™
Neither Tatlin nor Malevich was deceived by the turn of
phrase. They did not believe that "revolution and 'revolution in
art' are the same thing."60 They had an opportunity to join
forces, if not in the struggle for the new art, then at least in
resisting the advent of engage art. Punin arranged a temporary
truce between the warring sides. He facilitated Tatlin's
invitation to Ginkhuk (the State Institute of Artistic Culture).
Students held meetings to demand that Malevich and Tatlin
teach at the Academy of Fine Arts/" At the Petrogradskie
khudozhniki vsekh napravlenii (Petrograd Artists of All Trends)
exhibition in Petrograd in 1923, work both by Tatlin and by
Malevich's school was displayed. Hardly anyone realized that
this was not the beginning but the end of the era of artistic
freedom.
Tatlin, as he said, was "bored." He loved his work and
materials and did not like to give the impression that he was
occupied with anything other than his own work.
Malevich was diverted by the game of art as science. He was
living, as it were, a second life in art, from Impressionism to
Suprematism, and often appeared already to have gone beyond
the boundaries of Suprematism. Where?
The analytical investigations of the Suprematists of Unovis
in Vitebsk and at Ginkhuk stimulated new types of creative
work: Suprematist architecture, on the one hand (it would be
more correct to say three-dimensional Suprematist
architectonics), and "painterly-plastic realism," on the other.
The latter was no repetition of the Impressionism of Monet or
the painting of Leger, of the flickering metallic faktura of the
Cubism of their teacher, or of exercises on the magnetism of
32
fig- 5
Konstantin Via/of
Relief, ipip.
33
the interrelations of Suprematist forms. The individuality of
each person was expressed in the process of experiencing the
world in painting. Here there was a certain merger of artists
who had been members of Malevich's circle and artists who had
passed through Matiushin's school. A preference for the
universal gave way to the private. Suetin's paintings juxtaposed
the traditions of Suprematism with the mysticism of old
Russian art. In his own works, Malevich was not infrequently
the exponent of the group's ideas rather than the initiator of
the new. At times this led to conflicts, yet his students' respect
for their teacher remained unchanged.62
Tatlin did not support the beautiful mystification of
Malevich. He was "hounded out" of Ginkhuk and left for Kiev.
There he worked for two years in the Department of Dramatic,
Cinematic, and Photographic Arts of the Kiev Art Institute.
His students constructed complicated interiors on the principle
of his counter-relief. (This is somewhat reminiscent of Kurt
Schwitters.) Clashes among groups and movements in
Ukraine? Nothing of the sort interested him.6'
The rector of Vkhutein (the Higher Artistic-Technical
Institute), the sociologizing Pavel Novitskii, invited him back
to Moscow to teach. A small circle of attentive students
quickly formed around him in Vkhutein's Ceramics Faculty.64
But in the more "visible" Wood- and Metalworking Faculty,
Tatlin was clearly not understood — even though his colleagues
there included Gustav Klutsis, Lissitzky, and Rodchenko.6'
Tatlin spoke of his work in the same words as they, yet was
plainly unable to draw up a teaching program. That his
students produced work not at all similar to that of students in
the other workshops went unnoticed.
Tatlin proposed bionic principles for constructing artistic
form . . .
The influence of my art is expressed in the movement of the
Constructivists, of which I am the founder.
-Tatlin '
Tatlin's path and that of Suprematism in the 1920s are shaded
by their attitude toward Moscow Constructivism — the central
phenomenon of Russian art of that decade.
Constructivism attempted to answer all the questions posed
by the era. It took into account Tatlin's experience, as well as
the Suprematism fiercely rejected by the theorists close to him.
It even answered the hopelessly difficult question of how art
can function amid the collapse of normal human society by
advancing an art that participated directly in the process of
building life — that is, production art. The term "production
art" was then applied in, as it were, two dimensions: art for life
(excluding easel painting and sculpture "needed by no one")
and new constructive approaches to the solution of the tasks of
this art (or these arts).67
Malevich placed an equals sign between Constructivism as a
new method in art and the ideas of utilitarianism, which he
disparaged as "subsistence art." Constructivism thus meant
service — by new devices, in a new style — of the agitprop and
utilitarian needs of society.
Rodchenko? Long after Rodchenko had countered
Malevich's spiritual meditations in Beloe na belom {White on
White, 1918) with his art of the abyss, of the void — Chernoe na
chernom (Black on Black, 1918, plate no. 240) — Malevich still,
among his circle of followers, spoke Rodchenko's name as
something absolutely negative.
A certain movement emerged within Unovis. A movement
that did not renounce the language of Suprematism, yet
worked with the new constructive forms. Lissitzky and Klutsis;
Chashnik's tribune and Suetin's architectural designs of 1921.
This trend contributed a great deal to the art of the 1920s. In it
we find the working out of, or demand for a solution to,
problems of new architectural form, design, and book art.
Lissitzky, who thought in categories of an epoch's single style,
considered this trend and the activities of Obmokhu (the
Society of Young Artists) in Moscow to be the sources of a new
international constructive style.
Obmokhu remains one of the myths in the history of
Constructivism. It hindered both Gabo, the romantic of a new
technological art, and Lissitzky. For a very simple reason.
Rarely in the works of Obmokhu do we encounter new
methods of strictly artistic thinking — methods that, for
example, are obvious in Lissitzky (who, given his striking
receptivity to "outside influences," might easily seem on the
surface an eternal "eclectic"). Rather, in many works by the
members of Obmokhu (Karl Ioganson's simple structuralist
constructions are one exception), "engineerism" is advanced as
the new, topical, up-to-the-minute theme of art. Not
infrequently a construction is not truly constructed but merely
depicted. A similar phenomenon can be observed among
Obmokhu's contemporaries, the painters of the
Electroorganism group.68
Tatlin? Well, of course, his Tower did initiate
Constructivism as a special trend in Moscow. The Tower was
one of the indispensable icons of the international style of the
1920s, figuring in publications on painting and sculpture, on
design and architecture. It was as essential to them as it was
virtually useless in the concrete context of Moscow artistic life.
Of course, the Tower's unseen presence was a very important
factor. Yet the Moscow Constructivists invented their own
history. Tatlin was not excluded from it, but he was not
granted any advantages, either.6'
The impulse provided by Tatlin and the actual evolution of
the idea of Constructivism in Moscow during the 1920s
diverged objectively and decisively.
Organic artistic culture, toward which Tatlin was moving
during these years, and Constructivism were no less opposed
than were Suprematism and Constructivism. (Although many
Constructivist projects — at least outwardly, on a stylistic
level — preserved an echo of Suprematism.)70
The Constructivists recklessly spoke of replacing art with
life and wanted to make the object of production the object of
art.7' Tatlin built a stove in his room to keep from freezing,
sewed a specially tailored coat to keep from shivering in the
wind, and cut himself a comfortable work suit.
Playing with the industrial production of an object was not
the last motivation of the design solutions of the Moscow
Constructivists. Tatlin's designs are those of a Robinson Crusoe
who finds himself on an uninhabited island. And in this
sense — given the actual conditions in Russia at the beginning
of the 1920s — he was more of a realist than were the Moscow
Constructivists creating lovely designs disengaged from real
life. This was no Utopia, not fantasies of the unrealizable, but
the fashion of the day, full of life and energy — had life been
normal. Tatlin's designs are the designs of a hunter wintering
in the taiga and not counting on any help from anywhere.
The Constructivists affirmed the model of a life which
could be — for them, the form of art determined new forms of
life. Tatlin criticized the Constructivists — the "so-called
Constructivists" — for their imitation, as it appeared to him, of
contemporary style. 2
Letatlin (1929-32) is a flying bird, Tatlin's bicycle, on which
one can "sail" through the air.
In artistic circles reactions varied yet all struck basically the
same chord: "he's flown out of art," "a move into technology,"7'
"an amazing character, but absolutely no artist."74
And in nonartistic circles: "a work of art."75
34
The causes and effects were confused.
Tatlin: "Nature is more clever than mechanics."
His speculative and sincere critics:
In the depths of that worldview. out of which Letatlin wishes
to fly, the heavy reactionary biases of the departing class are
thickening. {The accusatory tone of the prosecutor is heard.} And what
are they? Worship of nature, hostility to the machine, an adjustment
of technology to the feelings of the individual person, naive faith in the
"wisdom" of organic forms, withdrawal from the industrial world.'6
This is indeed hard to square with the popular saying of the
Stalinist era: "You can't wait for charity from nature! Our task
is to take it from her."
// was a true perversion that unwashed and illiterate Russia, the Rus '
of Chekhov and Bunin, allowed itself the luxury of Chekhov and
Bunin, and, moreover, of Skriabin. Vrubel'. and Blok.
— Mikhail Levidm '
It is not at all surprising that the art of the 1930s ignored both
Tatlin and Malevich.
In Moscow's strange and Disneylandish Central Park of
Culture and Rest, people jumped from a parachute tower
reminiscent of Tatlin's monument."*
Suetin created a pylon with the text of the Soviet
constitution for the Exposition Internationale des arts et des
techniques (International Exhibition of Art and Technology. Paris,
1937) in the shape of an arkhitekton — and no one even
not iced. "'
Tatlin painted landscapes, still lifes, and portraits, but did
not exhibit them.
Malevich, with his strikingly developed social instinct, once
again attempted to outdo everyone upon his release from jail
(after having been arrested in Kiev in 1930). In an ordinary
composition of colored stripes he included a row of galloping
cavalrymen (plate no. 397). You want a "Soviet" picture — here,
take it! Many artists, incidentally, made similar gestures
during these years when the "Soviet theme painting" was
affirmed as the basis of Soviet art. Malevich did not gain much
by such a strategy and he resorted to it extremely rarely. It
didn't help at all. One of his students still has a letter to
Malevich (it arrived one day after his death) notifying him that
his request for a pension had been turned down.*0
The first steps of Pop Art, the art of assemblage, the flying
apparatus of Ponamarenko, Joseph Beuys's felt suits . . . Lucio
Fontana, Mark Rothko, Minimalism — in which Suprematism
and Constructivism were finally reconciled — the Zero group.
Marcel Duchamp, Kazimir Malevich, Kurt Schwitter^,
Vladimir Tatlin.
— Translated, from the Russian, by Todd Bludeau
Notes
The quotation in the initial epigraph is taken from
A. Kruchenykh and V. Khlebnikov, Slovo kak takovoe (Moscow:
EUY, 1913), p. 3.
1. A copy of this announcement of the exhibition in Tatlin's
studio is in the Manuscript Division, State Russian Museum,
St. Petersburg, f. 121, d. 117, 1. 61.
2. This relief was reproduced in Ivan Puni, Sovremennaia
zhivopis' (Berlin: Frenkel', 1923), p. 30.
3. The exhibitions were held not only in Moscow and
St. Petersburg but in Kiev as well.
4. The festivities — which included fireworks and floats along
the Neva River in St. Petersburg and a procession of "boyars"
in Red Square in Moscow — were matched in scale only by such
mass spectacles as The Storming of the Winter Palace in Petrograd
in 1919-20.
5. The episode was reported in the Moscow press. See, for
example, "Dve vystavki," Nov' 152 (December 23, 1914), and
"Khudozhniki — zhertvam voiny," Rannee utro 232 (December 7,
1914). Malevich was among the "victims" whose works were
removed by the jury prior to the opening of the exhibition.
6. Shchukin's "coup" was reported in the morning edition of
Birzhevye vedomosti 14706 (March 4, 1915).
7. Kazimir Malevich, letter to Mikhail Matiushin, September
24, 1915, Manuscript Division, Pushkin House, St. Petersburg,
quoted from E. F. Kovtun, "K. S. Malevich. Pis'ma k
M. V. Matiushinu," Ezhegodnik Rukopisnogo otdela Pushkinskogo
doma na 1974 god ( Leningrad : Nauka, 1976), p. 187.
8. Kazimir Malevich, letter to Mikhail Matiushin, January
1916, private archive, Frankfurt.
9. Kazimir Malevich, letter to Mikhail Matiushin,
September 24, 1915, in Kovtun, "K. S. Malevich. Pis'ma k
M. V. Matiushinu," p. 188.
10. Quoted in V. Lenin i izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo. Dokumenty.
Pis'ma. Vospominaniia (Moscow: Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo, 1977),
P-445-
11. Two leaflets were distributed at the exhibition, one with
statements by Malevich, Ivan Kliun, and Mikhail Men'kov, the
other with statements by Ivan Puni and Kseniia Boguslavskaia.
A small booklet containing both leaflets was also published.
12. K. Malevich, Ot kubizma k suprematizmu. Novyi zhivopisnyi
realizm (Petrograd, 1916). The brochure was in fact printed in
December 1915, in time for the opening of the a jo exhibition.
13. See, for example, Aleksandr Benua, "Posledniaia
futuristicheskaia vystavka," Rech', January 9, 1916. The
expression "oncoming boor" was Dmitrii Merezhkovskii's (see
his "Eshche odin shag griadushchego khama," Russkoe slovo.
June 29, 1914). See also Jane A. Sharp, "The Critical Reception
of the 0.10 Exhibition: Malevich and Benua," in this volume.
14. A. Kruchenykh, I. Kliun, and K. Malevich, Tainye poroki
akademikov (Moscow, 19 16), p. 30.
15. Varst {Varvara Stepanova], "Vystavka Ol'gi Rozanovoi,"
Iskusstvo 4 (February 22, 1919), p. 3.
16. Kazimir Malevich, letter to Konstantin Rozhdestvenskii,
April 21, 1927, private archive, Moscow.
17. Unovis slogans, 1920, private archive, St. Petersburg: GIZ.
35
i8. "Khudozhniki na dispute ob AKhRR," Zhizn' iskusstva 6
(1924).
19. N. Punin, Tatlin (protiv kubizma) (St. Petersburg: GIZ,
1921), pp. 17-18. Lev Bruni devised these formulae in 1916.
20. The booklet, like Malevich's Ot kubizma k suprematizmu, was
published in time for the opening of the 0.10 exhibition. Sergei
Isakov's article "K kontr-rel'efam Tatlina" appeared
simultaneously in Novyi zhurnal dlia vsekh 12, pp. 46—50; Novyi
zhurnal dlia vsekh was also the publisher of Vladimir Evgrafovich
Tatlin.
21. This work is known only from old photographs. Pestel's
family also retains letters of hers from the early 1950s in which
she mentions Tatlin.
22. One of the most recent publications on the Verbovka
collective is Ornament and Design. Nadezhda Udaltsowa. Varvara
Stepanowa. Alexandr Rodcbenko (Moscow and Frankfurt am
Main: Gallery Manege, 1991).
23. This according to Pestel's memoirs.
24. V. Khodasevich, Portrety slovami (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel',
1987), p. 106. In this publication, her reminiscences about
Tatlin have, unfortunately, been severely abridged.
25. S. Dymshits-Tolstaia, "Vospominaniia," 1939—40,
Manuscript Division, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg,
f. 700, ed. khr. 249.
26. L. S. Aleshina and N. V. Iavorskaia, comp., B. N. Ternovets.
Pis'ma. Dnevniki. Stat'i (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1977),
p. 242.
27. In Paris, Mukhina saw Popova often, and it is likely that
she met Tatlin through Popova.
28. Lipchitz, who had been living in Paris for some time, acted
as a translator for Tatlin.
29. See A. Strigalev, "O poezdke Tatlina v Berlin i Parizh,"
Iskusstvo 2 (1989), pp. 39-43, and Iskusstvo 3 (1989), pp. 26-30.
30. The photograph has been published in K. S. Malevich,
Essays on Art, Ipi$-ip33, ed. Troels Andersen, trans. Xenia
Glowacki-Prus and Arnold McMillin (London: Rapp &
Whiting, 1969), vol. 1, ill. 5.
31. Kazimir Malevich, letter to David Shterenberg, February 16,
1921, private archive, Moscow.
32. The date 1913 appears without caveat in the catalogue,
Destataia gosudarstvennaia vystavka. Si/prematizm i bespredmetnoe
tvorchestvo (Moscow: Otdel IZO Narkomprosa, 1919) — both in
Malevich's statement (p. 16) and in Stepanova's (p. 7).
33. This was owing, in part, to Malevich's desire to "improve"
his old works in advance of his trip to the West in 1927 and his
solo show at the State Tret'iakov Gallery in 1929. The resulting
confusion in dating was particularly apparent at the Malevich
exhibition held at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, in 1989.
34. This story evidently had its origins in conversations with
his followers in Vitebsk and Smolensk in 1920.
35. The term fevralizm is, nonetheless, likely tied to the white,
"snowlike" backgrounds of the paintings.
36. A postcard reproducing the painting, with a contemporary
inscription on the reverse identifying the work, is reproduced
in Angelica Zander Rudenstine, ed., Russian Avant-Garde Art:
The George Costakis Collection (New York: Abrams, 1981), p. 57.
The inscription is in fact Malevich's own.
37. Malevich gave his view of the history of Russian Cubism
in the context of European Cubism — and of Tatlin's place in
the historical process — in articles published in Ukrainian in
the Khar'kov journal, Nova heneratsiia (New Generation), in
1928. Both have been published in English; see "The
Constructive Painting of Russian Artists and Constructivism,"
in K. S. Malevich, Essays on Art. ipi^—ip^, ed. Troels Andersen,
trans. Xenia Glowacki-Prus and Arnold McMillin (London:
Rapp & Whiting, 1969), vol. 2, pp. 74-84.
38. Unovis slogans, 1920, private archive, St. Petersburg.
39. Quoted in Dymshits-Tolstaia, "Vospominaniia."
40. Malevich was threatened with arrest toward the end of his
stay in Vitebsk, but was spared, thanks to the help of Robert
Fal'k. In 1927 and in 1930, however, he was arrested.
41. It was owing to his stature that Tatlin became a leading
figure in the reform of artistic life after the February
Revolution.
42. Tatlin, who attached little importance to dates, gave 1912 —
and sometimes 1913 and 1914 — as the year in which he
advanced this slogan.
43. V Tatlin, T Shapiro, I. Meerzon, and P. Vinogradov,
"Nasha predstoiashchaia rabota," VIII s"ezd sovetov. Ezhednevnyi
biulleten' s"ezda 13 (January 1, 1921), p. 11.
44. Zodchii 19 (1915), p. 198.
45. The Eiffel Tower, by comparison, is 300 meters tall.
46. Private archive, United States.
47. On the relations between Punin and Tatlin, see I. Punina,
"N. Punin. Kvartira No. 5," Panorama iskusstv 12 (1989),
pp. 162-98.
48. P. Sorokin, "Otpravliaias1 v dorogu," Utrenniki 1 (1922),
p. 11.
49. Viktor Shklovskii appealed: "In the name of agitation,
remove agitation from art," in his Khod konia. Sbornik statei
(Moscow and Berlin: Gelikon, 1923), p. 45.
50. These are the words of A. Skachko, one of the most
prominent cultural officials of the period, in Vestnik iskusstv 5
(1922), pp. 2-3.
51. The monuments erected were chiefly of a traditional variety,
with little that was innovative about them. Although the
"Anketa profsoiuza skul'pturov-khudozhnikov"
("Questionnaire of the Professional Union of Sculptors") did
attempt to draw attention to contemporary forms: "Does the
monument meet the requirements of plastic culture? Does it
express the law of the deformation of forms?"
52. Quoted from a document in the Izo Narkompros archives.
53. See A. Strigalev, "O proekte pamiatnika III Internatsionala
khudozhnika V Tatlina," in Voprosy sovetskogo iskusstva 1
arkhitektury (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1973), pp. 408-52.
54. N. Radlov, 0 futurizme (St. Petersburg: "Akvilon," 1923),
p. 48.
55. K. Miklashevskii, Gtpertrofiia iskusstva (Petrograd, 1924),
P- 59-
56. Typescripts of Tatlin's theses and some of the other articles
prepared for the journal are held in both state and private
archives in Russia.
57. The discussion is mentioned in N. Khardzhiev, "Pervyi
illiustrator Maiakovskogo. K 90-letiiu so dnia rozhdeniia
36
V. Tatlina," Moskovskii kbudozhnik, December 18, 1975. Since
Maiakovskii — who was present — returned from Petrograd on
December nth and appeared at the Polytechnic Museum on
the 12th, the discussion evidently took place on December 13th.
58. Petrogradskaia Pravda, December 1920, quoted from an
undated newspaper clipping in the collection of A. Korsakova,
Moscow.
59. V. Veidle, "Iskusstvo pri sovetskoi vlasti," in Mosty. Sbornik
statei k 50-letiiu russkoi revoliutsii (Munich: Tovarishchestvo
zarubezhnykh pisatelei, 1967), p. 44.
60. Ibid., p. 38.
61. Such a resolution was passed, for instance, at a meeting of
Unovis in Petrograd on October 14, 1922.
62. See, for example, Il'ia Chashnik and Nikolai Suetin, letter
to Kazimir Malevich, October 4, 1924, published in
Snprematismus (Zurich: Galerie Schlegl, 1989), pp. 50-51.
63. I. Vrona, "O Tatline," 1967, private archive.
64. Tatlin considered Aleksei Sotnikov exceptional among his
students in Moscow, and Moris Umanskii and Iakov Shtoffer
among those in Kiev.
65. Central State Archive for Literature and Art, Moscow,
f. 680, op. 3, ed. khr. 208, 1. 238.
66. Quoted from a biographical note written by Tatlin in 1929,
published in Tatlin (Weingarten: Kunstverlag Weingarten,
1987), p. 328.
67. Production art is widely discussed in the publications of
VNIITE, Moscow, in the 1970s. For a different view, see
A. Mazaeva, Kontseptsiia "proizvodstvennogo iskusstva" 20-kb godov
(Moscow: Nauka, 1975).
68. On Obmokhu, see Aleksandra Shatskikh, "A Brief History
of Obmokhu" and Christina Lodder, "The Transition to
Constructivism," and on the Electroorganism group, Irina
Lebedeva, "The Poetry of Science: Projectionism and
Electroorganism," in this volume.
69. Constructivism began in approximately 1920, with the
activities of the group for "mass action" whose members
included both Aleksei Gan and Rodchenko.
70. Aleksei Gan's typographical layout of Sovremennaia
arkhitektura {Contemporary Architecture) — the journal of
Constructivism in architecture — is one example.
71. In an effort to reconcile abstraction and production art,
Boris Kushner advanced the term bespredmetnaia
kbi/dozhestvennaia kul'tura (non-objective artistic culture) in a
lecture at the House of Publishing, Moscow, on March 20,
1922.
72. Tatlin's text in the catalogue for the exhibition of his
Letatlin sketches at the Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, 1932) is
particularly contentious vis-a-vis the Moscow Constructivists.
73. E. Kronman, "Ukhod v tekhniku. Tatlin 1 'Letatlin,'"
Brigada khudozhnikov 6 (1932), pp. 19-23.
74. Quoted in A. Efros, Mastera raznykh epokh (Moscow:
Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1979), p. 547.
75. Letatlin was described as "not so much ... an invention
as ... a sui-generis work of art" in N. Frausek, "Iskusstvo v
tekhniku," Tekhnika, April 9, 1932, p. 4.
76. K. Zelinskii, "Letatlin," Vecherniaia Moskva, April 6, 1932,
p. 2.
77. M. Levidov, Prostye istiny. 0 chitatele i pisatele (Moscow and
Leningrad, 1927), pp. 154-55.
78. A. Voegeli, Sowiet-Russland (Bern: Verlag Hans Huber,
1936), Tafel 3.
79. Nikolai Suetin, letter to Anna Leporskaia, 1937, Collection
N. N. Suetina, St. Petersburg.
80. Rozhdestvenskii Archive, Moscow.
37
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Ivan Puni
Poster, o.io: The Last Futurist
Exhibition, 191$.
Lithograph, 74 x 55.5 cm.
Private collection, Zurich.
■■>.,
38
The Critical Reception
of the 0. 10 Exhibition:
Malevich and Benua
Jane A. Sharp
The prominent St. Petersburg critic Aleksandr Benua (also
known as Alexandre Benois) begins his review of the o.io
exhibition (Petrograd, 1915-16) and of Kazimir Malevich's
latest innovation — Suprematism — with the admission that he
is not in a position to judge vanguard art, that it is "absolutely
foreign to me." And in a self-reflexive passage of the text he
explains why: "But what I see at the exhibitions of our 'ultra-
Modernists, as such' simply leaves me cold and indifferent. I do
not sense the 'spirit of art' and I just become bored at them. In
this [reaction] a certain psychologizing manifests itself: I
become interested not in what I see but in the reasons why it
leaves me cold. My psychologizing is confused and full of
contradictions, bringing forth ever renewed floods of fatigue
and, again, boredom."1
But these first observations are deceptive; Benua's topos in
fact calls attention to the immense significance of Malevich's
inauguration of Suprematism. Above all, the review is
apocalyptical. Benua articulates his response to Suprematism in
terms of the horror of the unknown as well as in terms of a
certain horror of uniformity — the possibility of endless
repetitions of faceless, figureless canvases. For Benua, the 0.10
exhibition was not simply the "last Futurist exhibition" (as the
show was subtitled); it represented the end of painting
altogether and not the beginning of a new "national style."
Moreover, Benua did not interpret the Chernyi kvadrat {Black
Square, 1915, fig. no. 2) as a sign of radical social engagement or
epatement as he did earlier vanguard work. Instead, he describes
the Black Square as a tabula rasa, a "complete zero" that has
made representation (as a response to the natural world)
irrelevant to a completely decadent "indifferent" society. The
review proclaims a watershed moment in the vanguard artist's
challenge to and absorption into the status quo: the
"boorishness" and "Americanization" of Russian society
predicted by Benua (and by Dmitrii Merezhkovskii in an
earlier review) has in fact been achieved, and no one has
noticed.2
This reaction has its reverse parallel in a number of
comments by vanguard artists and critics after the Revolution
when the Black Square came to represent the very face of the
ongoing revolution and the new society that it sought to
create. Like the earliest theorists of the European avant-garde
in the mid-nineteenth century, El Lissitzky understood and
valued the dynamic power of the radically new in art to predict
or even effect radical political and social change.' In his essay of
1920, "Suprematism in World Reconstruction," Lissitzky
presents his view of the Black Square as the harbinger of a new
cosmic era: "for us suprematism did not signify the
recognition of an absolute form which was part of an already-
completed universal system, on the contrary here stood
revealed for the first time in all its purity the clear sign and
plan for a definite new world never before experienced — a
world which issues forth from our inner being and which is
only now in the first stages of its formation, for this reason the
square of suprematism became a beacon."4 Following the
Revolution, Lissitzky cast the aims of Suprematism in political
terms by counterpointing parallel descriptions of the successive
upheavals brought about through art and Bolshevik
Communism: "into this chaos came suprematism extolling the
square as the very source of all creative expression, and then
came communism and extolled work as the true source of
man's heartbeat."*
Landmarks in the periodical criticism of the times (such as
Benua's review of 0.10) reveal that the alliance forged between
stylistic innovation and radical social politics which we ascribe
to the revolutionary era was grounded in earlier perceptions of
avant-garde art. Benua's response to Suprematism as the
herald/revealer of social and aesthetic cataclysm shows how the
39
reception of avant-garde art before the Revolution determined
the artist's paradoxical status as a "leftist" wielding
considerable authority after the Revolution. In order better to
understand this condition, we must recognize first that both
left artists and leftist politicians drew their authority in the
new society from the radical contexts of their prerevolutionary
activities.
Malevich was sufficiently disturbed by Benua's review to
write an angry reply, which he intended to have published in a
daily newspaper but instead sent directly to the critic himself.6
In the letter, Malevich reproaches Benua for dominating a
system that has exhausted itself and survives only to impede
the new. But his response is more than a complaint lodged
against the status quo. In language that abounds with social
and political metaphor, the letter threateningly predicts the
system's violent demise: "You have deprived the academy and
museum of any real significance. You have made them strictly
partisan exhibitions and thus a tool, the casemate of a prison, a
restraint on freedom of thought. You have set up your
commonplace cliches there and built up a reputation for them;
and the work of anyone that follows your pattern faithfully can
hang alongside yours in your exhibitions . . . You have all the
tools to erase everything that is not made in your image, but
canvas is strong and the garret serves as the boor's gallery and
museum. Your grandchildren will get the canvases out from
there and will wring the neck of your system."7
Of course, a little over a year later, with the October
Revolution, the system that Benua represented for Malevich
would be overthrown and, by 1920, with the inception of
Unovis (the Affirmers of the New Art) in Vitebsk, Malevich's
own collective "system" would be installed. His program, like
the statutes designed by a number of artists in the years of War
Communism, functioned as a critique of the Imperial academic
system by replacing its teacher/student hierarchy with a
collective workshop structure. The significance of this
inversion of social hierarchy and its synecdochical relation to
the birth of Suprematism was articulated even before the
formal transformation of the Vitebsk Popular Art School into
Unovis. The cover of Malevich's pamphlet 0 novykh sistemakb v
iskusstve {On New Systems in Art) collapses the primary
geometric forms of Suprematism and the admonition that "the
overturning of the old world of arts will be etched across your
palms" (recto); the notice on the verso reads "Work and edition
by the workshop [artef] of artistic labor at the Vitebsk Svomas"
(fig. no. 3).8
This attack and counterattack between critic and artist
epitomizes communication before the Revolution between
vanguard artists of Malevich's generation and their critics. The
exchange manifests the contradiction inherent in the
vanguard's position as a movement of opposition to a dominant
social structure and aesthetic system which it essentially seeks
to replace. Similarly, Benua's discussion of Malevich's work,
like his evaluation of other vanguard artists, particularly
Natal'ia Goncharova and David Burliuk, is at once an extended
critique and a measure of the avant-garde's impact on
prerevolutionary Russian society. Although Benua would
periodically claim he was bored by the vanguard artist's
posturing, a summary reading of his reviews of any number of
avant-garde exhibitions before the Revolution would lead us to
attribute to him any reaction but ennui. Indeed, Benua was
extremely vocal in his hostility to Russia's fledgling vanguard.
A prominent artist himself, cofounder of the journal Mir
iskusstva {World of Art) in 1898, and an art historian, Benua
became in 1908 the chief art critic of the daily St. Petersburg
newspaper Rech' {Speech), which published each month his
reviews of artistic and theatrical events. He was the among the
first critics to isolate and describe the new Primitivism
manifested in vanguard exhibitions beginning with the
Golubaia roza (Blue Rose) exhibition of 1907.'' In 1912 he wrote
a blistering critique of avant-garde polemics, "Kubizm ili
kukishizm" ("Cubism or Je-m'en-foutisme"), which focused on
the interpretations of French Cubism by David Burliuk and
other artists.10 He may be credited as one of the critics who
defined and named the avant-garde, using the terms peredovaia
molodezh ' (vanguard youth), levye (leftists), and futuristy
(Futurists) somewhat indiscriminately in referring to the artists
of Petersburg and Moscow who formed the groups Soiuz
molodezhi (Union of Youth), Bubnovyi valet (Jack of
Diamonds), and Oslinyi khvost (Donkey's Tail). (In his review
of the 0.10 exhibition, he would describe Malevich's group as
the krainii levyi flang [extreme left flank] of the art world.)
Together with Iakov Tugendkhol'd, Sergei Makovskii, and
Maksimilian Voloshin, all contributors to major newspapers as
well as to the influential art journal Apollon {Apollo), he was a
powerful arbiter of taste among the art-going (and art-buying)
public; as Malevich would claim with good reason a few years
later, "without the stamp of Benua and his associates, no work
of art could receive civil rights and life's benefits."" Malevich
continued by listing the names of artists who had both suffered
from and profited by the attention of Benua and his colleagues:
"This was the case with Vrubel, Musatov, P. Kuznetsov and
Goncharova, whom they finally recognized after throwing mud
at them for a long time; but how many have still not been
acknowledged!"12 Malevich's response, in other words,
recognizes that the critics (Benua in particular) who so
successfully dominated and controlled the art market played a
primary role in defining the avant-garde as a marginal, radical
force.
Benua's antipathy to avant-garde art appears to have peaked
earlier, in 1912, with his cutting reviews of the Union of Youth
exhibitions which took place in St. Petersburg and included
members of the Moscow avant-garde as well." His criticisms of
vanguard art typically center on the Russian artist's accursed
proclivity for assimilating external influences. In Benua's view,
Russian art is so assimilative that its history and the vanguard's
place in this history must be characterized as nonevolutionary.
Vanguard innovations in style do not point toward a
movement laying the basis for a new school or "national style";
rather they appear as "nothing else but equilibristic stunts,
somersaulting in the air." Benua situates this observation,
however, in the context of Russian society. Deprived of social
support (a stable, informed audience), contemporary art
appears to be "arbitrary" and "impermanent" — it can only
reflect the current fashion or trend. He argues that despite the
remarkable talents involved, vanguard artists share a common
trait: they produce "hurried, unthought-through work —
shoddy goods [desbevka]. This is the absence of what is called a
school."'4 Although this attack was leveled at the vanguard
youth in general, in his review of Malevich's Suprematist work
Benua uses similar metaphors: "And this is not merely the
hoarse cry of the carnival barker [zazyval'sbcbik] but the main
'trick' in the puppet show [v balagancbike] of the very last word
in culture."'5
By the end of 1913, however, with the opening of
Goncharova 's mammoth solo exhibition in Moscow, Benua
seemed to have reconciled his wholly negative view of
vanguard culture with a new appreciation of the expressive
power of Primitivism and even of Cubo-Futurism in Russian
art. His comments on this occasion reflect his broader anxiety
over the "difficulties" inherent in reading vanguard art,
prefiguring his critique of Malevich in 1916. In this respect,
Benua's review remains an important record of the process of
public and critical acceptance that this exhibition initiated for
Goncharova's work and for vanguard art generally. Like his
40
fig. 2
Kazimir Malevich
Black Square, ipi<>.
Oil on canvas, 79.5 x 79.5 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
fig- 3
Kazimir Malevich
Cover for his On New Systems in Art, ipip.
Lithograph, 23 x 37.2 cm.
Collection of Prints and Drawings,
The Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich.
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41
critique of Malevich's work, this earlier review is unusually
self- reflexive; it mediates between references to his previously
negative evaluation of Goncharova's work and soul-searching
examinations of the reasons for his present capitulation:
/ went again to Goncharova's exhibition in part to test my first
impression, in part simply to delight in it. It turns out I had not gone
astray the first time, I was not mistaken. On the contrary, today I
sensed even more clearly that this is a great talent and a true artist.
Generally speaking, I believed her even more, and consequently I may
change completely my whole attitude toward the kind of painting
which she represents . . . I saw at this exhibition many old familiar
paintings which were in our {World of Art) and other exhibitions. It
means a great deal to see them now within the artist's whole oeuvre.
Their "talent" was always clear to me and I got into many arguments
with close friends over this. But I did not completely "believe in them. "
Much of her art seemed a pose to me, a distortion and youthful joke.
Now I am ready to believe in the complete sincerity of a master and at
the same time it is absolutely clear to me that it is not Goncharova who
needs to learn but we who must learn from her, as it always follows
that one should learn from all the great and strong. No, this is not
ugliness or distortion but the very opposite: the intention (accomplished)
to become perfectly connected with oneself, to express in the simplest way
that which is hidden in the soul and bursts to the surface. ,6
Paradoxically, it is now Benua who comes to the vanguard
artist's defense, countering Goncharova's detractors by arguing
that much of her work, especially her earliest paintings and
pastels, is "completely 'acceptable,' accessible to the
comprehension of those who have only an amateurish interest
in art."
Benua's acceptance of Goncharova's work, however, like his
acceptance of the new trends it represents, does not read as a
step toward the commodification of a previously "militant"
artistic message.'7 Rather, it is a disruptive, continuously
equivocal process for him that requires a complete reevaluation
of the whole vanguard tradition which he had dismissed just
the year before in his essay "Cubism or Je-m'en-foutisme" :
As with my experience last year in Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin's
gallery, I lived through a lot in the past two days at Goncharova's
exhibition. Now I can no longer consider as heresy even the most
extreme dislocations /"sdvigi/, that nightmarish abracadabra that has
issued from Picasso and has infested all of the vanguard youth, here
and in the West. These pictures still disturb me, yet I now clearly feel
that they exist within the realm of art.
Benua's lengthy discussion of Goncharova's work registers
in actuality what Viktor Shklovskii later defined as an aim of
ostranenie (making strange) in literature — the deliberate
impeding of the viewer's perception.'" Developing his new
insights into the pictorial forms of Cubism and Futurism,
Benua describes his response to a roomful of Goncharova's
latest and most trying Futurist works, her urban machine and
factory images:
In accordance with the new formulae of painting: objects are
depicted as precisely fragmented and incorrectly reconstituted colors,
terrify ingly "raw"; through forms, which only with great difficulty
are identifiable with forms in reality, some sort of " half -spoken" signs
pass by. One has to look at the painting, and involuntarily read what
is said there. One's attention is intensified — even more than that, it is
tormented. Looking at such pictures requires suffering.
Benua's appreciation of his dilemma is contingent upon
recognizing in Goncharova's language and subject matter signs
of the modern age, which he, like so many artists of his
generation, transposes into an apocalyptic vision of the future.
In this context, the vanguard artist appears as a clairvoyant of
the encroaching industrial era — the machine its new god.
Benua ultimately finds positive value in Goncharova's work,
which he now interprets as a messianic expression of the
impending battle with the "philistinism" and "American
devilry" associated with developed capitalism in Russia. He
concludes that this trend can only be overcome or reversed by
"looking for the revelation of God in everything, turning away
from superficial stagnation and [instead] constantly
penetrating into the essence of things." The difficulty in
reading the image has the effect of slowing down perception,
allowing the viewer to contemplate the relationship of the
fragmented forms to his or her life experience. For Benua, who
finds a direct correspondence between the faktura (density) of
Goncharova's canvases and real perceptual phenomena, her art
becomes the "sincere" and "honest" reflection of a world in
turmoil. Thus, Benua assures his readers that the "suffering"
experienced in viewing Goncharova's work is essentially
beneficial, even redemptive.
Two years later, in his review of the o.io exhibition, Benua
reversed this position. Malevich's Black Square cannot redeem
society — it is the icon of a cardinal sin: humankind's arrogant
elevation of the self (and the machine) above nature and God —
the Black Square is blasphemy. Benua expresses this view in no
uncertain terms, repeating the words koshchunstvo (blasphemy)
and koshchunstvovat' (to blaspheme). It is clear that, with the
advent of the o.io exhibition, Benua shifted his critique of
vanguard art from accusations of epigonism and eclecticism to
the hostile recognition that with Suprematism Malevich had
truly advanced a coherent new style in painting.
In order to understand Benua's extreme reaction to the first
presentation of Suprematism, we must examine his quasi-
religious, quasi-social/political rhetoric in more detail. Benua's
critique focuses on the way in which the Black Square was hung
in the exhibition: "high above, right under the ceiling, in the
'holy place'" — in the traditional place of the icon (fig. no. 4).
Because of Malevich's choice in hanging the painting, the
Black Square does not merely constitute an analogue to the icon
and thereby acquire similar authority as an image; the Black
Square actually replaces the icon. By usurping the seat of the
icon, the Black Square diagrams the destruction of one set of
values and the installation of a new hierarchy — the dominion
of forms over nature. Benua explains: "Without a doubt, this is
the 'icon' which the Futurists propose as a replacement for the
Madonnas and shameless Venuses [besstyzhie venery], it is that
'dominion' [gospodstvo] of forms over nature." Malevich's
system signals the encroachment of an insidious rationalistic
logic into the realm of aesthetic experience, at the base of
which lies a "horrific means of mechanical 'renewal'
[mekhanicheskoe 'vosstanovlenie'] with its machinishness." This
act of blasphemy even penetrates Benua's description of the
Black Square: it is a "Black Square in a white frame" (here
Benua uses the term that denotes the setting of the icon —
v belom oklade — to describe the frame). His language clearly
indicates a refusal to acknowledge the evolution of Malevich's
art; his concern to expose Malevich's blasphemous act prevents
him from taking any notice of Suprematism's own dependence
upon the icon (a source for Malevich's Primitivism of circa
1910-12).
Thus, he claims that the Black Square issues from and serves
only to illustrate Malevich's "sermon of zero and death," his
statement (nearly identical to the first paragraphs of Ot kubizma
k suprematizmu [From Cubism to Suprematism}) published in a
leaflet which was distributed free at the exhibition."' In Benua's
view, Malevich's claim to authority, to "dominion" or
"supremacy" (whence the term Suprematism is derived), is
42
fig- 4
View of the o.io exhibition showing Malevich's Black Square in the
"icon 's place, " center top.
43
ahistorical, for it is achieved only through pride, by self-
assertion. The point and purpose of his essay — to demonstrate
the destructive force of Malevich's blasphemous act — are
achieved through references to a chief biblical sin, that of
vainglory: "[This] is not a chance little episode that occurred
on the Field of Mars; it is one of the acts of self-affirmation the
source of which has as its name the abomination of desolation.
It asserts itself through arrogance, haughtiness, and by
trampling over all that is dear and tender; it will lead only to
death."20 Text and review combined, this is an account of
"absolute origins"2' that has no equivalent in Russia's past
cultural experience. The force of the disruption that the advent
of Suprematism hailed is mirrored in the passion of both the
artist's and the critic's language.
A year later, in his review of the Sovremennaia zhivopis'
{Contemporary Painting) exhibition held at Nadezhda
Dobychina's gallery (where the o.io exhibition had also been
held), Benua continues his attack on the ahistoricity of
Suprematism, asserting that Malevich's "little circles, squares,
and sticks have only given birth to Aleksandra Ekster's
exercises."22 Benua's review is a willful misstatement, since we
know that within the year (1916-17) a number of artists —
including Nadezhda Udal'tsova, Ivan Puni, Liubov' Popova,
Ol'ga Rozanova, Ivan Kliun, and Mikhail Men'kov, among
others — had adopted Suprematism as their own and formed the
group known briefly as Supremus.2' Benua's purpose, however,
is consistent with his long-standing commitment to exposing
the commercial self-interest and "trickery" of avant-garde art.
Malevich's written response is a protracted attack on
Benua's system, his authority, and the value which he attaches
to mimesis. (Indeed, most vanguard critiques of the art
establishment link mimesis with the power obtained by
specific artists and critics in the academy and press.) In the first
section of the letter, Malevich counters Benua's argument by
asserting that mimetic representation, based on the canons of
Roman and Greek art, has long ceased to have any value for
society. Furthermore, he claims that critics like Benua and
Merezhkovskii have failed to see the future in the new; instead,
he writes, "Merezhkovsky stands on the new age's square
amidst the furious vortex of machines both on earth and in the
sky; he stares with blind eyes and continues to hold Caesar's
bone above his gray head and to shout about beauty."24
Contesting Benua's argument that Suprematism is ultimately
destructive, he asks, "but how has the World of Art enriched
our own times?" and responds with a parodistic description of
Benua's own painting: "He has given us a couple of crinoline
petticoats and a few uniforms from the time of Peter the
Great." Similarly, he matches Benua's biblical rhetoric with his
own. His account of the difficulties the avant-garde artist faces
in countering Benua's system of "commonplace cliches," which
dominates by entrapping unsuspecting young artists desperate
to exhibit and attain fame, is a cri de foi far more eloquent than
his manifesto, From Cubism to Suprematism:
I possess only a single bare, frameless icon of our times (like a
pocket), and it is difficult to struggle.
But my happiness in not being like you will give me the strength to
go further and further into the empty wilderness. For it is only there
that transformation can take place.
And I think you are mistaken when you say in reproaching me
that my philosophy will destroy millions of lives. Are you not, all of
you, like a roaring blaze that obstructs and prevents any forward
movement?"'
Malevich's statement engages one of the principal motifs in
Benua's review, that of the vanguard artist as social outcast.
Extending his metaphor of the carnival barker, Benua makes an
analogy between the cries of the barkers on the streets of
Petrograd and the vanguard's claim for legitimation in Russian
culture. He writes: "You see that they are artists, that they
have the right to a critical evaluation. And yet everything that
they say and do rings out with such cries of poverty that pity,
which had been verging on respect, yields to some kind of
internal panic, and one wants to run away in any direction
(even to the lackey-like Petrograd artists) without looking
back, only so that one might no longer see those shapes bent
by the bitter cold, those painted faces, or hear those horrible
cracking voices."26
Malevich's dialogue with Benua essentially confirms
Benua's analogy — that the vanguard artist acts out in the
world of art the experiences of the unenfranchised, the true
outcasts in society. This analogy explains, in part, the passion
of Malevich's response to Benua — clearly more was at stake in
his inauguration of Suprematism than the advancement of a
new "style." Malevich's battle was one of empowerment and
entitlement in a society which viewed art, politics, and
morality as essentially and implicitly integrated.
It is ironic that Benua failed to appreciate the historical
evolution of Malevich's work. For there is every indication that
Malevich, more than any other vanguard artist of his
generation (with the possible exception of Mikhail Larionov),
sought to promote a historical context for the inauguration of
his movement that would validate his claim for recognition. If
Malevich asserted that "the face of my Square cannot become
merged with a single master or age," he also affirmed,
practically in the same breath, that "I, too, am a stage of
development."2" This statement sets forth the paradox
embodied in the avant-garde artist's position, overlaying the
values Malevich clearly attached to historical views of his own
artistic evolution (and the possibility of engendering a
"school") with his desire to create a style that was absolutely
unfamiliar to his contemporaries.
Malevich's statement epitomizes the dialectic operating
within Modernist discourse on originality and imitation.
Inasmuch as Malevich claimed his place in history as the
originator of a unique style, his contribution required a context
for its interpretation. The desired interpretation (the
originality of Suprematism) could be assured only by
establishing relationships to preceding artistic trends and by
the generation of a following among like-minded artists.
Malevich's dual concern echoes in the work and theoretical
writings of other left artists throughout the 1920s. The will
among vanguard artists to invent or trace their artistic
evolution runs up continually against their momentous
ruptures with the past and their Utopian interest in generating
a new origin for the art of the future. Here again, Malevich
stands out; the charts which he generated through teaching at
Vitebsk and, after 1921, in Petrograd/Leningrad are unique if
characteristic. They map the evolution of modern art from
Realism to Suprematism and ascribe the generation of a new
characteristic form (the "additional element") to a master artist
at the head of each new movement. In this way Malevich could
diagram his place within an evolutionary model of art history
and at the same time point to his unique contribution, the
"additional element" contained within Suprematism.28
Benua's reaction to the 0.10 exhibition and his analogy
between the vanguard artist and the carnival barker provide
part of the background for Malevich's historicizing efforts. Like
other vanguard artists, Malevich tended to counter critics'
misinterpretation of his art, and their authority, by generating
his own stylistic history. Evgenii Kovtun and Charlotte
Douglas have traced the evolution of Malevich's ideas that led
to the development of Suprematism as a style by drawing
principally on the remarkably revealing correspondence
44
vf hi «f>
fig- 5
Kazimir Malevich
Set design: Act II, scene J, for Aleksei Kruchenykh,
Victory over the Sun, ipij.
Pencil on paper, 21 x 2/ cm.
St. Petersburg State Museum of Theater
and Musical Arts.
between Malevich and his close friend and associate, Mikhail
Matiushin." References to this correspondence have tended to
further Malevich's own interpretive aims: to aggrandize and
mystify the creative act of invention (or "self-creation"). '° As
this correspondence confirms, by May 1915 Malevich had come
to attribute the historical evolution of his new style to a
particular origin in his work — to his set designs for Pobeda nad
solntsem (Victory over the Sun, 1913), a performance on which he
had collaborated with Matiushin and the poets Aleksei
Kruchenykh and Velimir Khlebnikov." Douglas has drawn our
attention particularly to the set design for Act II, scene 5
(fig. no. 5) and its "square-within-a-square format" as a design
that was "halfway to {the Suprematist square's] realization.""
Yet Malevich's own intentions are realized here — for he had
written to Matiushin asking that he include in a new edition of
the libretto (planned but never published, according to
Kovtun) an illustration of this particular work. Through this
publication, the stage backdrop would serve as a testament
documenting the origins and evolution of Suprematism. Thus
Malevich writes to Matiushin: "I would be very grateful if you
would include my drawing of the curtain for the act in which
the victory took place . . . This drawing will be of immense
significance for painting. That which was done unconsciously
now bears unexpected fruit [neobychainye plody].""
Malevich's concern to identify a point of origin for
Suprematism and at the same time to advance Suprematism as
a new origin in a continuous historical evolution of styles
explains the tremendous secrecy with which he guarded the
work that he painted in this year. In a manner that has no
parallel in Russia, Malevich was determined to author
Suprematism. It was advanced specifically as his signature
style. Both Kovtun and Douglas assert that until the autumn
of 1915 no one except Matiushin knew what Malevich was
working on in his studio, but that on or just before September
25, 1915, Ivan Puni surprised Malevich with an unexpected visit
and saw his latest work. Malevich immediately wrote
Matiushin, urging him to move ahead with the brochure:
"Now, no matter what, I must publish the brochure on my
work and christen it and in so doing protect my rights as
author."'4 A few days later he informs Matiushin of the
aftereffects in the Moscow art world, noting that a bitter
debate over the creation of a new direction has arisen, but that
"no one knows the how or the what of it," and everyone wants
to study his (Malevich's) notes. Still, for the larger public,
Malevich's new work remained unknown. As late as November
25th, he could write to Matiushin, "The name everyone knows,
only the content no one knows. Let it remain a secret."*
The control with which Malevich manipulated the
inauguration of Suprematism can also be understood in the
light of Benua's frequent reviews or critiques of vanguard
epigonism. Two external factors impinged both on Malevich's
concern over the historical representation of Suprematism's
origin and on Benua's response. First, the rapid pace at which
artists were exposed to new trends and producing new work,
together with the constant turnover of exhibitions and debates
and the flood of reviews, had effected a perceptible acceleration
of change in the art world. As early as 1909, Benua
characterized this phenomenon as uniquely Russian. In
February of that year, he wrote a polemical critique of the
Russian art world that begins with the observation: "There is
not a day when a new art exhibition does not open. This
would be interesting if our groups of artists were organized
according to essential [common] features or strivings
determined by each group. But nothing of the sort ... In a
provincial manner, divisions occur among artists here for the
most absurd reasons . . . and so now simultaneously a mass of
exhibitions have opened of a 'midsize type' in which all the
45
same artists participate, and the character of the work from one
group to the next is indistinguishable."'6
Internecine feuds among artists as well as reviews of art
exhibitions testify to the spirit of competition which this
pluralism of the art world engendered. From the 1911— 12 season
on, vanguard groups were beset by factionalism, with artists
continually realigning themselves. The Donkey's Tail group
was formed initially by artists who, with Larionov and
Goncharova, broke away from the Jack of Diamonds.'7
Although they exhibited together, Malevich feuded with both
Larionov and Tatlin, and Malevich's invention of Suprematism
was in part fueled by his long-standing rivalry with both
artists.'6 This struggle for ascendancy and legitimation was
mapped out in the installation of the 0.10 exhibition, with
Malevich and his supporters occupying one room while Tatlin
and his group (including Popova, Vera Pestel', and Udal'tsova)
were positioned in another; the sign professional artists
marked the difference between them.
Malevich's efforts during the year preceding the exhibition
manifest the profound competitiveness that shaped all aspects
of vanguard activities. In this sense his writings conveyed a
very clear public message which linked the historical
legitimation of his new style with assertions of its superiority
over other potential contenders. In 1915, Malevich's letters to
Matiushin record Malevich's frustration with the contemporary
art scene and with its eclecticism, and articulate the sense
among artists that a new coherent movement was needed. As
Malevich puts it, "In Moscow they are beginning to agree with
me that we must present ourselves under a new banner."'9
Thus, while he asserts the need to present a coherent
movement through the 0.10 exhibition, he wonders if anyone
else has advanced a rival theory or style and continues by
giving the reasons why he finds Suprematism the best name for
his: "But it will be interesting to see: will they give [this
banner] a new form? I think that Suprematism is the most
appropriate [name], since it signifies supremacy [or
dominion — gospodstvo}.""'0 He attached tremendous importance
to the text which first bore the name of the style (From Cubism
to Suprematism) and which had been published by Matiushin in
time to be sold at the exhibition. Thanking Matiushin,
Malevich writes, "It will advance my position tremendously"
and again a few days later, "the brochure is playing an
important role for me."4' In the context of vanguard rivalries,
there could be no mistaking the value which Malevich placed
on competitive public access to his work and on control over
the means and process of its critical reception.
An equally important consideration for Malevich was the
changing makeup of the public and the shifts in its reaction to
the vanguard debates and exhibitions. Outside of published
criticism, the social composition of the urban Russian public is
extremely difficult to document. Reviews, however, give a
good indication of the turnarounds in the public response to
vanguard art. In his "Cubism or Je-m'en-foutisme" of 1912, Benua
writes that just two years earlier, portions of Burliuk's speech
on Cubism would have created a scandal. Benua makes these
comments in order to illustrate "how fast we have declined,"
indicating that by 1912 segments of the public had become
inured or even attracted to the vulgarity of vanguard debates
and exhibitions. The year 1910 is in fact an appropriate one to
mark, since it constitutes the beginning of this generation's
series of confrontations with the public in the exhibition space.
The first Jack of Diamonds exhibition (which included work
by Malevich, Goncharova, Larionov, and Tatlin together for the
first time) opened to cries of scandal in December 1910,42 a year
later, at a public debate organized by this group, Larionov
announced the platform of the Donkey's Tail group to jeering
crowds.4' By 1912, the public usually attended these debates in
the hope of witnessing a scandal or fight (notorious incidents
were always documented in the press). In 1913 Larionov was
tried and fined for having punched one artist in the face and
thrown the podium into the audience.44 But in 1913 there were
also signs of acquiescence, of public acceptance of provocations
and, indeed, of new "radical" painting.
The overwhelming success of Goncharova 's solo exhibition
in Moscow at the end of 1913 is the first significant measure of
public acceptance and critical acclaim for the vanguard artist.
Paintings which had been considered radical just a year ago
were now appreciated or accepted by the same public and
described in the press as "accessible." A reviewer in Moskovskaia
gazeta (The Moscow Gazette) declared: "It seems that Rayist and
Futurist art are becoming stylish [rnodnyi\. In a little while,
both Goncharova and Larionov will be acclaimed on the level of
Korovin and Kustodiev."45 The same reviewer writes that the
success of the opening night was completely unexpected by the
organizers and made Goncharova an instant sensation. His
summary of the "successful components" of the evening focuses
primarily on the appeal her exhibition had as a social diversion,
uniting in symbiotic agreement the vanguard artist as
provocatrice and her receptive audience: "Packed halls, 'chic'
public, the incredulous looks and confused smiles of those who
were leaving, the ironic 'witticisms' and independent poses of
the brave, a couple of Futurist characters persistently competing
for attention in orange jackets and with carnations braided in
their hair, the blushing-for-joy Goncharova and the magically-
appearing-in-twenty-places-at-once Larionov."46 Thus, the fresh
appeal of Goncharova's art is set, within the context of the
exhibition space, as that of a new type of urban spectacle —
dominated by an elite Muscovite public that now included the
vanguard artist.
There are parallel contemporary accounts of the public-
debate forum which by 1913 had become an established event. A
booklet published in Moscow in 1914 chronicles the reciprocity
between the audiences and the organizers of these vanguard
debates.47 Observing that the debates have become increasingly
frequent and varied, the anonymous author writes:
If one studies carefully the different lectures, and particularly the
debates, one comes to the inevitable conclusion that they are no more
than a shameless and open exploitation of popular entertainment. It is
frequently so hapless, and crude (an exploitation), that one has to
wonder why the public reacts with such relative calm to these lowbrow
transgressions.
By the way, the public, for the most part, gets what it is looking
for. And it is usually looking for a scandal.
The participants in debates and lectures have reckoned beautifully
with this search for scandal and organize them relatively skillfully. To
the naive person it may seem that the scandal arose suddenly, without
warning. Whereas the entrepreneur has invited a particular opponent
(especially from among the Futurists), knowing full well in advance
that he will create a scandal. 4S
The new reconciliation of the "radical" and the "acceptable"
in the public reception of vanguard art and in the forum of the
debate explains much about the seemingly contradictory
responses to the 0.10 exhibition. Thus-, among the reviews of
that exhibition, we find a number of wholesale rejections of the
work shown there as well as a few of the most subtle positive
fig. 6
Ol'ga Rozanova
Cupboard with Dishes, 191$.
Oil on canvas, 64 x 4$ cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
46
47
fig- 7
Nadezbda Udal'tsova
Kitchen, 191$.
Oil on canvas, 66 x 81.5 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
48
appraisals. One of the more negative reviewers connected
Suprematism with Tatlin, exclaiming that "the audacity of
Futurism has given birth to Suprematism, sincerity has turned
into a joke at the public's expense. And not a trace of painting
remains. Only tinplate."49 Like Benua in his earlier reaction to
Goncharova's Cubo-Futurist work, the reviewer describes his
appreciation of the difficulties inherent in looking at the Cubo-
Futurist painting, contrasting that perceptual process with the
new work on view:
You squint, you blink, you unexpectedly study the corners of the
painting on the canvases of the Futurists.
But not with the Suprematists. The work is dry, monotonous, there
is neither painting nor individuality. Malevich is like Popova, Popova
is like Puni, Puni is like Udal'tsova. You can't distinguish between
them.
Negative reviews such as this one are typical of the majority
of reviews of avant-garde art and, in their leveling of
individualities, rationalize the competitive spirit of vanguard
enterprises — both exhibitions and debates. The dialogue
between Benua and Malevich is unusual precisely because of
the passion and personal nature of the attack. It was in the
interest of those in control to underplay the shock of avant-
garde transgressions and to neutralize, as the reviewer does
above, difference as a function of vanguard innovation. In this
context, the positive reviews are more interesting, for they
display far more critical sophistication than the negative ones
(Benua's aside). And, while reviewers occasionally take sides,
they openly refer to artists' concern with their place in history,
engaging in a more explicit way the question of originality and
posledovatel 'nost' (succession). For example, Matiushin praises
both Malevich's and Tatlin's work and, not surprisingly, asserts
that Suprematism gives "the strong impression that it is the
oncoming shift [sdvig] in art."50 Regarding Tatlin ("without a
doubt, a great artist"), he argues that despite the "intensity of
his constructive idea," his earlier reliefs are stronger works of
art.'' Matiushin's review is of greater importance as an indicator
of the degree to which the language of criticism and theory had
developed by 1915 (he speaks of the "strength of painterly
masses," of the "dynamism of colors," of "color planes," and so
forth). He notes in closing that the competition among artists
for pervenstvo (primacy) undercuts the development of their
ideas: "Whoever says the last word is king!"52
Aleksandr Rostislavov's review, published in the same
journal as Benua's, is the strongest positive review of both
Malevich's and Tatlin's work.5' He first notes that the
exhibition marks a "difficult shift [tiazhelyi sdvig]" in the
"changing forms of art." Meanwhile, he argues, this exhibition
does constitute the end of a tradition (Cubo-Futurism), whose
past has become clearly associated with the work of French
artists, primarily Cezanne and Picasso. He observes that the
tremendous speed of creative "inventiveness" is underscored by
the fact that "yesterday's innovators are today's 'elders'" and are
not represented at this exhibition (he probably had
Goncharova, Larionov, Vasilii Kandinskii, and Burliuk in
mind). He then discusses both Suprematism and Tatlin's
counter-reliefs in a way that has no parallel in Russian art
criticism before the Revolution. His review of Malevich's
paintings concludes with the question: "Doesn't this
geometricization have something to say . . . this planar
painting of such secretive and appealing complexity and
mystery?" He observes of Tatlin's Kontr-rel'ef (Counter-Relief ,
1914-15, plate no. 70) "only an artist could so combine these
materials . . . and harmonize the intersecting surfaces and
inflections. Moreover, the mechanical work itself is not easy
where the materials must strictly serve a preplanned totality."
Likewise, he notes the skill with which Rozanova in Shkaf
s posudoi (Cupboard with Dishes, 1915, fig. no. 6; compare plate
no. 46) and Udal'tsova in Kukhniia (Kitchen, 1915, fig. no. 7;
compare plate no. 39) manipulate form and color.
Rostislavov reads an agenda into Malevich's coordination of
text (From Cubism to Suprematism) and event (the inauguration
of Suprematism itself), questioning the linear history the
brochure purports to establish. He observes that, from
Impressionism to the present day, painting has indeed moved
away from mimeticism to "self-contained painterly means of
expression." But he notes that others (he names Kandinskii)
have reached "non-objectivism" and implies that this path may
not lead "in strict sequence to Malevich's Suprematism." By
citing both Kandinskii's work and Tatlin's achievement in
creating the counter-relief, he essentially challenges the notion
of singular stylistic histories, and points instead to the many
manifestations of abstract art in Russia. Moreover, he laments
the disappearance of Cubo-Futurist "painterly-ornamental
perceptibility" and concludes that "the inventiveness and rapid
advancements made by new artists cannot be doubted, but the
question remains: are not concepts of form in art in a state of
chaotic ferment?"54
Although diametrically opposed, Benua's and Rostislavov's
reviews both register the assimilation of vanguard art to an
unprecedented degree. By rejecting Malevich's claims in the
first place, Benua demonstrates the extent to which success as
an artist was determined by the artist's hegemonic conception
of "style." Rostislavov's equivocation reveals, in contrast, a
different sense in which "style" could be understood in Russia
in 1915: as personal and pluralistic.55 And significantly, despite
Malevich's effort, he remained unconvinced that Suprematism
would transform the chaos of today into tomorrow's order. The
reception of Suprematism thus points to a broader
phenomenon, the transformation of the avant-garde from
oppositional strategists and instigators of public scandal into
historians of their own recent past. Malevich's affirmation in
written texts of his own place in history, like his return in the
1920s to figurative painting of earlier Primitivist themes,
continued and extended his quest for legitimacy in a factional
and highly politicized cultural environment.
Benua's review of the 0.10 exhibition has been overlooked
by most contemporary scholars, even dismissed, no doubt
because its tone and content demythologize avant-garde artists'
claims to absolute originality. Yet this text, perhaps more than
any other, represents the paradoxical status of the Russian
avant-garde before the Revolution as outsiders who turned to
their advantage concepts of originality and succession which
had marginalized them. Malevich's response to Benua, read in
the context of his correspondence with Matiushin, reveals both
a public and a private creative concern over the legitimation of
Suprematism in an art world marked by competition, stylistic
eclecticism, and real social and economic disenfranchisement.
Both Benua's and Rostislavov's reviews give shape to what
might be called the politics of originality. The unique
succession of "isms" in the art of the 1910s, documented by-
published manifestos and often by the press, reveals that the
"anxiety of anticipation"56 among artists in Russia was equal to
that experienced by the West European avant-garde. And
significantly, in light of the work displayed in the present
exhibition, this suggests in turn that the tenor of competition
and debate during the critical mid-teens prepared the ground
for the combative responses of the same generation of artists to
artistic pluralism in the 1920s.
49
Notes
i. Aleksandr Benua, "Posledniaia futuristicheskaia vystavka,"
Rech', January 9, 1916, p. 3.
2. Benua (and Malevich as well; see note 6) was responding to
an article by the writer Dmitrii Merezhkovskii entitled
"Eshche odin shag griadushchego khama," which was
originally published in the Moscow daily newspaper, Russkoe
slovo, June 29, 1914. This article, whose title may be translated
"The Oncoming Boor Is One Step Closer," refers to the
intelligentsia's anxiety over social philistinism and the
commercial exploitation of culture during the period
immediately preceding the Revolution in Russia.
3. Several of the earliest of recent studies on the theory of the
avant-garde, including Renato Poggioli's The Theory of the
Avant-Garde, trans. Gerald Fitzgerald (Cambridge and London:
Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1968), trace the
relationship of avant-garde aesthetics and social and political
radicalism to the first and second quarters of the nineteenth
century in France. Linda Nochlin's exploration of the avant-
garde in France, published originally in 1968 in Art News
Annual, cites the French Utopian socialist Henri de Saint-
Simon and the Fourieriste art critic Gabriel-Desire Laverdant.
See her essay, "The Invention of the Avant-Garde: France,
1830-1880," in her The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-
Century Art and Society (New York: Harper and Row, 1989),
p. 2. Laverdant is also quoted in Poggioli: "Art, the expression
of society, manifests, in its highest soaring, the most advanced
social tendencies: it is the forerunner and the revealer." Theory
of the Avant-Garde, p. 9.
4. El Lissitzky, "Suprematism in World Reconstruction," in
Sophie Lissitzky-Kiippers, El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, trans.
Helene Aldwinckle and Mary Whittall (Greenwich, Conn.:
New York Graphic Society, 1968), p. 327. The lowercase letters
reproduce the style in Lissitzky 's original text.
5. Ibid.
6. "A Letter from Malevich to Benois," May 1916, in
K. S. Malevich, Essays on Art, ipi^-ip^, ed. Troels Andersen,
trans. Xenia Glowacki-Prus and Arnold McMillin
(Copenhagen: Borgen, 1968), vol. 1, pp. 42-48. Andersen states
(p. 243n) that Malevich intended to publish it. Instead, he
apparently sent the letter directly to Benua, for it concludes
with the postscript: "Since the doors of the press are closed to
us I am writing to you personally." The letter is located in the
Manuscript Division, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg,
f. 137, d. 1186, 1. 1-3. Excerpts were previously published in
Russian in Lev N. Diakonitsyn, Ideinye protivorechiia v estetike
russkoi zhivopisi kontsa ip — nachala 20 vv. (Perm1: Permskoe
knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1966), pp. 214—15. The quotations in this
essay are adapted from the published English translation.
7. "Letter from Malevich to Benois," p. 45.
8. K. S. Malevich, 0 novykh sistemakh v iskusstve (Vitebsk:
Unovis, 1919). The cover is reproduced in Larissa A. Zhadova,
Malevich: Suprematism and Revolution in Russian Art, ipio—ip^o,
trans. Alexander Lieven (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982),
plate 185. For a full discussion of the "collective" nature of the
Vitebsk school (later Posnovis and Unovis), see Aleksandra
Shatskikh, "Unovis: Epicenter of a New World," in this
volume.
9. A. Benua, "Povorot k lubku," Rech', March 18, 1909, p. 2.
Sergei Makovskii was another critic to identify Primitivism as
a trend among a new generation of artists. For a summary of
and excerpts from Makovskii's writings, see John E. Bowk,
"The Blue Rose Movement and Russian Symbolism," Slavonic
and East European Review 51, no. 123 (April 1973), pp. 161-81,
reprinted in Russian Art, i8ys-iP57- A Collection of Essays (New
York: MSS Information Corporation, 1976), pp. 63-93.
10. A. Benua, "Kubizm ili kukishizm," Rech', November 23,
1912, p. 2. It was this review, no doubt, that incited Burliuk to
publish his counterattack as a booklet entitled Galdiashchie
Benua i novoe russkoe natsional'noe iskusstva (St. Petersburg, 1913).
The book took the form of an artificial debate with Benua in
which Burliuk quoted long excerpts from Benua's writings
interspersed with his own commentary.
11. K. S. Malevich, "Zadachi iskusstva i rol1 dushitelei
iskusstva," Anarkhiia 25 (March 23, 1918). As translated in "The
Problems of Art and the Role of Its Suppressors," in Malevich,
Essays on Art, ipi^-iptf, vol. 1, p. 49. The essay is an important
retrospective critique of the power individual critics exercised
(both Benua and Iakov Tugendkhol'd are named). Although
the essay was published with the signatures of Aleksei
Morgunov and Aleksei Gan in addition to that of Malevich,
Andersen attributes the text to Malevich. For his discussion of
Malevich's participation in this journal, see ibid., p. 244m
12. Mikhail Vrubel1, Viktor Borisov-Musatov, Pavel Kuznetsov,
and Natal'ia Goncharova were all major participants in avant-
garde exhibitions at different points in time before the
Revolution.
13. The organizers of the Union of Youth (1910— 14) were
Mikhail Matiushin and Elena Guro. Members of the group and
participants in their exhibitions were Pavel Filonov, Ol'ga
Rozanova, Iosif Shkol'nik, Vladimir Markov (Waldemars
Matvejs), David Burliuk, Kazimir Malevich, and Vladimir
Tatlin. A number of members of the Muscovite Donkey's Tail
group exhibited in Union of Youth exhibitions, notably
Natal'ia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov. See E. F Kovtun,
"K. S. Malevich. Pis'ma k M. V Matiushinu," Ezhegodnik
Rukopisnogo otdela Pushkinskogo doma na ipy4 go<^ (Leningrad:
Nauka, 1976), p. 178 n. 19.
14. Aleksandr Benua, "Sezan i Gogen," Rech', January 27, 1912,
p. 2.
15. In the review of the 0.10 exhibition, Benua paradoxically
attributes some positive value to these "tricks." He praises
Tatlin using the very same terminology with which he
criticizes Malevich: "I am familiar with Tatlin's theatrical
designs in which there is a charming and original quality of
color and an unusual balancing [ekvilibristika] of line-filleg.}.
Perhaps this is only trickery, but even trickery is already an art,
and for this talent is required." Benua, "Posledniaia
futuristicheskaia vystavka," p. 3.
16. Aleksandr Benua, "Dnevnik khudozhnika," Rech', October
21, 1913, p. 4.
17. Goncharova's work had been censored from exhibitions on
several occasions, first in March 1910; as a result, she was tried
in December 1910 for pornography, but acquitted. See Jane A.
Sharp, "Redrawing the Margins of Russian Vanguard Art:
Goncharova's Trial for Pornography in 1910," in Sexuality and
the Body in Russian Culture, ed. Jane Costlow, Stephanie Sander,
and Judith Vowles, forthcoming.
18. Victor Erlich translates Shklovskii's term zatrudnennaia
forma as "deliberately impeded form," but as his analysis of this
concept reveals, the term refers both the artist's act of "creative
deformation" and to the perceptual process. Citing Shklovskii,
he writes: "The act of creative deformation restores sharpness to
our perception, giving 'density' to the world around us.
'Density (faktura) is the principal characteristic of this peculiar
world of deliberately constructed objects, the totality of which
50
we call art.' . . . Another crucial aspect of the 'deliberately
impeded form' ... is rhythm — a set of contrivances
superimposed upon ordinary speech." Victor Erlich, Russian
Formalism: History— Doctrine, 3d ed. (New Haven and London:
Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 177-78.
19. K. S. Malevich, Ot kubizma k suprematizmu. Novyi zhivopisnyi
realizm (Petrograd, 1916). Although the brochure is dated 1916,
a number of reviews document that it was sold at the
exhibition when it opened on December 17, 1915. According to
Evgenii Kovtun, it was published in two more editions in 1916,
the second in Petrograd, the third in Moscow. See Kovtun,
"K. S. Malevich. Pis'ma k M. V. Matiushinu," p. 181 nn. 28, 31.
20. Benua's paranoid response also has its precedent in a
number of responses to Goncharova's solo exhibitions in both
Moscow and St. Petersburg. A self-appointed critic, Valentin
Songaillo, published a separate pamphlet on the occasion of her
Moscow exhibition. Like Benua in his later critique of
Malevich, Songaillo casts his language in quasi-religious terms,
labeling Goncharova an "antiartist" in an obvious parallel to
the Antichrist. This pamphlet did in fact achieve its intended
effect of censoring Goncharova's exhibition. When the show
(significantly reduced in size) opened in St. Petersburg in
March 1914, police raided the building and seized all of her
religious paintings in accordance with a zapret (ban) invoked by
the "spiritual censorship committee" of the Orthodox Church.
On this occasion she was also accused by the press of
blasphemy. See Jane A. Sharp, "Primitivism, 'Neoprimitivism'
and the Art of Natal'ia Goncharova, 1907-14." (Ph.D. diss.,
Yale University, 1992), chapter 4.3.
21. I refer to Richard Shiff's seminal writing on the history of
this concept, and particularly to his discussion of the "classic"
in "The Original, the Imitation, the Copy, and the
Spontaneous Classic: Theory and Painting in Nineteenth-
Century France," Yale French Studies 66 (1984), pp. 27—54,
where, referring to Quatremere de Quincy's writings on the
classic Greeks, he observes: "They initiated a tradition
characterized by a system and principle and served as an
absolute origin, not a mere member, like any other member, of a
sequence of copies" (p. 37). His discussion of this concept has
extremely important implications for Malevich's view of his
own originality, and his anxiety over his success at enlisting
followers and having "copyists" who would simultaneously
(and paradoxically) both ensure his place in history as an
"absolute origin" and devalue his contribution, as will be seen
in what follows.
22. Aleksandr Benua, "Vystavka 'Sovremennoi russkoi
zhivopisi,'" Rech', December 2, 1916, p. 2. Malevich did not
exhibit work in this show; among the participants were David
Burliuk, Nikolai Kul'bin, Chagall, Kandinskii, Popova, and
Udal'tsova.
23. During the course of 1916 the group was formed and a
publication planned; Malevich refers to the publication of a
journal in his correspondence with Mikhail Matiushin as
early as 1915. See Kovtun, "K. S. Malevich. Pis'ma k
M. V Matiushinu," p. 186. Due to the events of war and
revolution, the publication was never realized.
24. "Letter from Malevich to Benois," p. 43.
25. Ibid., p. 45.
26. Benua, "Posledniaia futuristicheskaia vystavka," p. 3.
27. "Letter from Malevich to Benois," p. 44.
28. For more details regarding these charts, see Troels
Andersen's translations from Russian to English in Troels
Andersen, Malevich, catalogue raisonne of the Berlin
Exhibition, including the collection in the Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1970), pp. 115-36
and Linda S. Boersma's essay, "On Art, Art Analysis and Art
Education: The Theoretical Charts of Kazimir Malevich," in
Kazimir Malevich, i8y8—i^$, catalogue for exhibition organized
by the Russian Museum, Leningrad, the Tretiakov Gallery,
Moscow, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (Amsterdam:
Stedelijk Museum, 1989), pp. 206-23. This linear evolutionary
concept of art history was firmly entrenched in Russia by 1914,
and the models were primarily West European. Iakov
Tugendkhol'd writes, for example, of Matisse and Picasso: "If
the work of Matisse represents the extreme and logical
conclusion of the prophecies of Gauguin, then Picasso's
painting represents the paradoxical completion of Cezanne's."
la. Tugendkhol'd, "Frantsuzskoe sobranie S. I. Shchukina,"
Apollon 1—2 (January— February 1914), p. 28.
29. Kovtun, "K. S. Malevich. Pis'ma k M. V Matiushinu";
Charlotte Douglas, "0-10 Exhibition," in The Avant-Garde in
Russia, ipio-ipjo: New Perspectives, catalogue for exhibition
organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian
Institution, Washington, D.C. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1980), pp. 34-40 and Swans of Other Worlds: Kazimir Malevich
and the Origins of Abstraction in Russia (Ann Arbor: UMI
Research Press, 1980), pp. 35-47.
30. Rosalind Krauss has called the avant-garde artist's discourse
on originality (she refers specifically to Marinetti's 1909
manifesto) a "parable of self-creation" and explains: "more than
a rejection or dissolution of the past, avant-garde originality is
conceived as a literal origin, a beginning from ground zero, a
birth." Malevich is one of her sources; she observes, regarding
his famous pronouncement "Only he is alive who rejects his
convictions of yesterday," that "the self as origin has the
potential for continuous acts of regeneration, a perpetuation of
self-birth." See Rosalind Krauss, "The Originality of the
Avant-Garde: A Post-Modernist Repetition," October 18 (Fall
1981), pp. 47—66, reprinted in Art After Modernism: Rethinking
Representation, ed. Brian Wallis (New York: The New Museum
of Contemporary Art in association with David R. Godine,
1984), p. 18.
31. For details regarding the performance and its relationship to
Suprematism, see Charlotte Douglas, "Birth of a 'Royal Infant':
Malevich and 'Victory over the Sun,'" Art in America,
March-April 1974, pp. 45-51, and her revised text in Swans of
Other Worlds, pp. 35-47.
32. Douglas, Swans of Other Worlds, p. 46.
33. Kazimir Malevich, letter to Mikhail Matiushin, May 27,
1915, in Kovtun, "K. S. Malevich. Pis'ma k M. V Matiushinu,"
pp. 185-86. In his notes, Kovtun quotes from another,
unidentified letter from Malevich to Matiushin which clarifies
Malevich's image: "The curtain depicts the black square, the
embryo [zarodysh] of all possibilities — in its development it
acquires awesome power" (p. 180). That the correspondence
dates to May 1915 suggests that Malevich may indeed have
worked to Suprematism through a reexamination of his designs
for Victory over the Sun. It is clear from the correspondence, at
any rate, that his recognition of the historical value of the
designs occurred simultaneously with the creation and
development of his Suprematist paintings.
34. Kazimir Malevich, letter to Mikhail Matiushin,
September 25, 1915, in Kovtun, "K. S. Malevich. Pis'ma k
M. V Matiushinu," pp. 180-81.
51
35- Kazimir Malevich, letter to Mikhail Matiushin,
November 25, 1915, in Kovtun, "K. S. Malevich. Pis'ma k
M. V. Matiushinu," p. 189.
36. He names the Soiuz russkikh khudozhnikov (the Union of
Russian Artists), Salon, Novoe obshchestvo (the New Society),
Obshchestvo peterburgskikh khudozhnikov (the Society of
Petersburg Artists), Akvarelisty (the Watercolorists), and the
Osennii salon (the Autumn Salon). Aleksandr Benua,
"Khudozhestvennye pis'ma. Obilie vystavok," Recb', February
13, 1909, p. 2.
37. The split occurred in November-December 1911 as a result
of Larionov's disagreement with the official registration of the
Jack of Diamonds group; Larionov and his supporters
countered this move by announcing the separate organization
of a series of exhibitions beginning with the Donkey's Tail
show, which took place in Moscow in March-April 1912. His
critique of the Jack of Diamonds group was publicized in the
daily press; see "Ssora khvostov s valetami," Golos Moskvy 285
(December 11, 1911), p. 5.
38. See Vasilii Rakitin, "The Artisan and the Prophet: Marginal
Notes on Two Artistic Careers," in this volume.
39. Kazimir Malevich, letter to Mikhail Matiushin, September
24, 1915, in Kovtun, "K. S. Malevich. Pis'ma k M. V.
Matiushinu," p. 187.
40. Ibid.
41. Kazimir Malevich, letters to Mikhail Matiushin,
November 22 and 25, 1915, in Kovtun, "K. S. Malevich. Pis'ma
k M. V. Matiushinu," p. 189.
42. Gleb Pospelov has documented the reception of the Jack of
Diamonds exhibition extensively in his article "O valetakh
bubnovykh i valetakh chervonnykh," Panorama iskusstv ipjj
(Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1978), pp. 127—35, and more
recently in Bubnovyi valet. Primitiv i gorodskoi fol'klor v moskovskoi
zhivopisi ipio—kh godov (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1990),
pp. 98-114.
43. A summary of the debate was published in a daily
newspaper: "Moskva. Khudozhestvennyi disput," Protiv
techemia 22 (February 18, 1912), p. 3. For an account in English,
see Benedikt Livshits, The One and a Half-Eyed Archer, ed. and
trans. John E. Bowlt (Newtonville, Mass.: Oriental Research
Partners, 1977), pp. 81-84.
44. These incidents occurred at a debate organized in
conjunction with the Mishen' (Target) exhibition on March 23,
1913; a summary of the trial was published as "Futuristy na
sude," Golos Moskvy 240 (October 18, 1913), p. 5.
45. F M., "Chrezvychaino udavshiisia vernisazh," Moskovskaia
gazeta, September 30, 1913. In these reviews Goncharova is
frequently compared with Konstantin Korovin (1861-1939), a
graduate of the Imperial Academy of Arts (who received the
title of Academician in 1905) and one of Larionov's teachers at
the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.
Boris Kustodiev (1878-1927), a former student of Repin's at the
Imperial Academy, received the title of Academician in 1909.
46. Ibid.
47. "O lektsiiakh i disputakh," Al'manakh Verbnogo bazara.
Moskovskii sezon 1913-14 (Moscow: Levenson, 1914), pp. 12-18.
48. Ibid, pp. 12-13. The author describes the public as being
predominantly composed of young women from the provincial
intelligentsia.
49. B. Lopatkin, "Futurizm— Suprematizm," reprinted in
Herman Berninger and Jean-Albert Cartier, Les Annees d'avant-
garde, Russie — Berlin, ipio-ip2j, vol. 1 of Pougny: Catalogue de
loeuvre (Tubingen: Ernst Wasmuth, 1972), p. 56.
50. M. Matiushin, "O vystavke 'poslednikh futuristov,'"
Ocharovannyi strannik. Al'manakh vesennii, 1916, p. 17.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. A. Rostislavov, "O vystavke futuristov," Recb', December 25,
1915, p. 3.
54. Ibid.
55. The succession of avant-garde exhibitions in 1915 — Moskva.
1915 god (Moscow. The Year ipi$, Moscow), Tramvai V (Tramway
V, St. Petersburg), and Vystavka kartin levykh techenii v iskusstve
(Exhibition of Paintings of Left Trends in Art, St. Petersburg) —
must have confirmed the sense of extreme pluralism in
vanguard art.
56. This term is borrowed twice: from Richard Shiff's
adaptation of Harold Bloom's "anxiety of influence" (The
Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry [New York: Oxford
University Press, 1973]). See Shiff, "The Original, the
Imitation, the Copy, and the Spontaneous Classic," pp. 27-31,
5^-54-
52
Unovis: Epicenter of a
New World
Aleksandra Shatskikh
Unovis (the Affirmers of the New Art), though it has been
variously labeled a group, a collective, a school, a commune, an
organization, and a program, is a phenomenon without parallel
in the history of early Soviet art and defies classification. In its
origins and day-to-day existence, Unovis betrayed many
features of a sui-generis religious fraternity or variety of
Masonic lodge. Unovis itself, adopting the revolutionary
terminology of the era, preferred the description of a "party in
art." This "party" of the artistic avant-garde, so its members
believed, was called upon to ensure, through both theory and
practice, the emergence of new forms of life via the evolution of
new systems in art. The wide range and variety of its
endeavors, its broad influence and tangible achievements, do,
however, permit one to characterize Unovis as a unique (and
largely realized) Utopian model — firmly rooted in the ideas of
Russian culture of the first decades of the twentieth century —
of "art into life."
Kazimir Malevich was Unovis's moving force and architect.
Like other leaders of the Russian avant-garde (such as Mikhail
Larionov, Mikhail Matiushin, and David Burliuk), Malevich
was endowed with exceptional organizational abilities. An
irresistible urge to forge artistic alliances marked his career
from the beginning; in Kursk at the close of the nineteenth
century, for example, he had set up a studio, patterned after the
Parisian academies, as a gathering place for artists with
common interests. The general situation in European art —
where the founding of one's own movement, endowed with a
name, theory, and disciples, had become the pinnacle of self-
affirmation for the vanguard artist — added fuel to Malevich's
organizing efforts. In the mid-i9ios, he assembled some ten
artists under the banner of the movement he had inaugurated
in painting, Suprematism. The group was called Supremus,
and only the events of World War I prevented the
undertaking's achieving its full promise.
Malevich nourished the idea of establishing an authoritative
artistic center, which would fulfill multiple functions, over the
course of many years. The planning that came to final fruition
in the creation of Ginkhuk (the State Institute of Artistic
Culture) in Leningrad went back to 1917. In September of that
year, Malevich, who had been elected president of the Art
Department of the Moscow Council of Soldiers' Deputies,
wrote to Matiushin: "I've conceived a number of projects, to
wit, organizing the First People's Academy of Arts in Moscow;
my idea was warmly received, and the ball's rolling — soon I'll
open several small departments of those cells which on a broad
scale will constitute the Academy."' His work as a teacher in
the State Free Art Workshops in Moscow and Petrograd was an
additional spur to Malevich's ambitious plans. And the Vitebsk
Popular Art School — especially during Malevich's first year
and a half there — proved an ideal laboratory for the
development of Malevich's ideas.
Malevich, accompanied by El Lissitzky, arrived in Vitebsk
from Moscow at the beginning of November 19192 and was
appointed to a teaching position at the Popular Art School, an
institute of higher education founded and headed by Marc
Chagall, a Vitebsk native. At the time, workshops were
conducted at the school by Vera Ermolaeva, Nina Kogan,
Lissitzky, Iurii Pen, Aleksandr Romm, Chagall, and the
sculptor David Iakerson. Mikhail Veksler, Ivan Gavris,
Evgeniia Magaril, Georgii and Mikhail Noskov, Nikolai
Suetin, Lazar1 Khidekel', Lev Tsiperson, Ivan Chervinko, and
Lev Iudin were among the students. Il'ia Chashnik, who had
spent a term at the Popular Art School and in the autumn of
1919 had enrolled with Malevich at the State Free Art
Workshops in Moscow, followed his teacher back to Vitebsk.
Malevich was immediately occupied with a number of
ventures. A week after his arrival, the Pervaia gosudarstvennaia
53
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iliniiTfi I
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vystavka kartin mestnykh i moskovskikh khudozhnikov (First State
Exhibition of Paintings by Local and Moscow Artists) — which
included works by Chagall, Malevich, Vasilii Kandinskii, Ol'ga
Rozanova, Robert Fal'k, and others — opened in Vitebsk.
Lectures and public meetings were held in conjunction with
the exhibition, and Malevich's appearances at them attracted
large audiences. The chance to publish his theoretical text, 0
novykh sistemakh v iskusstve (On New Systems in Art), written in
the summer of 1919, had been one of the motivations for
Malevich's move to Vitebsk. Now that complex treatise
furnished the basis for his lectures and speeches and was
augmented by the "Ustanovlenie A" ("Statute A"), written on
November 15, 1919. In the new appendix Malevich codified the
tenets he presented to his students.
Lissitzky and the students in his graphics workshop printed
On New Systems in Art lithographically and in an edition of one
thousand copies, as specified by Malevich.' On New Systems in
Art was the embryo of the "visual book" subsequently
cultivated by Lissitzky. For Malevich's followers and students,
the brochure was also painting's "declaration of independence"
from objectivity, proclaiming the commandments of a "new
testament" — among which the most significant was the
injunction to introduce into art a "fifth dimension, or
economy. "
The zeal and homiletic power of Malevich's lectures — he
had entered his prophetic period — worked their influence,
above all, on those in his audience primed to apprehend the
dizzying transition from figurative, representational art to art
that was non-objective. Lissitzky, Ermolaeva, and Kogan were
among the first to become fervent supporters of Malevich.
Almost in a matter of days, Lissitzky, an architect by
training and until recently under the influence of Chagall,
brushed aside figuration and the intricate decorativeness of his
earlier work — which had been strongly colored by the
traditions of Jewish culture — and plunged, with his native
facility and passion, into non-objective art. A vestige of his
stormy "romance" with Suprematism and its creator would
remain with Lissitzky for the rest of his life: the "transrational"
phrase from the opening of On New Systems in Art — "U-el-el'-ul-
el-te-ka, " which became a sort of anthem or motto for Unovis —
was the inspiration for Lissitzky 's adopted name, first El and
later El'.4
Ermolaeva and Kogan had come to Vitebsk from Petrograd
(where their association began with the founding of the City
Museum; their assignments to Vitebsk by Izo Narkompros [the
Department of Fine Arts of the People's Commissariat of
Enlightenment] came one on the heels of the other) and were
exponents, as their early works attest, of a figurative art
making decorative use of devices of the avant-garde. At the
Vitebsk Popular Art School, Lissitzky, Ermolaeva, and Kogan
popularized Malevich's theories and formed among themselves
a group of "elder Cubists."
The new artistic "party" grew at breakneck speed; as in a
fairy tale, events unfolded over the course not of days but of
hours. The tempo was set by the receipt, in November 1919, of
a significant (and sizable) commission — decorations for the
anniversary of the Vitebsk Committee to Combat
Unemployment — to be filled in a brief span of time: the
anniversary fell on December 17th. Malevich and Lissitzky
made the preliminary sketches and plans for the decorations,
■
I
• v.
tf
fig. 2
El Lissitzky
Cover for Unovis Almanac No. 1, Ip20.
Pencil, india ink, and gouache on paper, 35.5 x 2$.$ cm.
Manuscript Division, State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
fig. 1
Malevich (center) and members of Unovis en route from Vitebsk to the
First All-Russian Conference of Teachers and Students of Art in
Moscow, ip20. Lissitzky, Kogan, Ermolaeva, Chashnik, Khidekel',
ludin, and Magaril are among those pictured.
55
while teachers and students collaborated on their execution.
Intensive labor was required to produce the enormous number
of Suprematist decorative panels that adorned the White Army
Barracks building, which housed the committee, as well as
embroidered banners, slogans, and stage decorations for the
committee's festive convocation. Such possibilities of practical
application were from the beginning Suprematism's greatest
attraction and immediately won over the majority of students
at the Vitebsk school. Suprematism's entry into the "utilitarian
world of things" would be the cornerstone of Unovis.
The aura in which Malevich and his work were bathed grew
tenfold in the wake of a trip by the Vitebsk students and
teachers to Moscow to view Malevich's first solo show, open
from the end of 1919 through the beginning of 1920 at the
Sixteenth State Exhibition. (The architect Moisei Lerman, who
was among the Vitebsk students, has described this trip and
the exhibition, as well as his vague recollection of encountering
Vladimir Maiakovskii there.)5 Malevich, their new leader, had
all the necessary credentials: revolutionary innovation in his
work, a fully thought-out theory, clear methods for advancing
toward the new, and superior artistic results.
On January 19, 1920, the Vitebsk students organized
Molposnovis (the Young Followers of the New Art). Nine days
later, they joined forces with their teachers, the "elder Cubists,"
and Molposnovis was succeeded by Posnovis (the Followers of
the New Art).
The members of Posnovis were determined to introduce
new forms into all types of creative endeavor, and the
celebration of Front Week in 1920 offered them an opportunity
to try their hand. They decided to present the legendary opera
Pobeda nad solntsem (Victory over the Sun) on February 6th, the
first day of Front Week; the stage and costume designs for this
production were created by Ermolaeva under Malevich's
general direction (plate no. 152). Nina Kogan contributed the
world's first "Suprematist ballet" — a curious and
underappreciated venture, astonishing in its conception: Kogan
proposed to show the "sequential unfolding of the movement
of forms itself," crowned by the "supremacy of the black
square" (plate no. 151).6 (It should be noted that the idea of a
"non-objective cinematography" put forward much later by
Malevich was to some degree anticipated by Kogan's ballet.)
And Mikhail Noskov gave a public lecture on the new art (he,
together with his brother, Georgii, played a conspicuous role in
the life of the Vitebsk school, Posnovis, and later Unovis; after
1922, unfortunately, all trace of the brothers vanishes).
With these successes, the members of Posnovis grew
confident of their powers and resolved to represent themselves
henceforth not merely as followers of the new art but as its
affirmers. Unovis was born on February 14, 1920. 7 The name, an
acronym in keeping with the verbal shorthand and word
coining of the times, was greatly to Malevich's liking — he
named his daughter Una in Unovis's honor. And the new word
spawned others: unovisets (Unovist), unovisskii (Unovistic), and
unovizm (Unovism). The ease with which "Unovis" entered the
Russian language was an acknowledgment of the reality and
vitality of a phenomenon for which no other word existed.
The months from November 1919 through May 1920
may be called Unovis's period of Sturm und Drang.
Unovis's problems, working conditions, and the nature of its
production are documented in detail in the typewritten
Al'manakb Unovis No. 1 (Unovis Almanac No. 1), completed by
June 1920 (fig. no. 2).8 A wealth of material by Malevich
himself appears in the Almanac, wherein he devotes significant
space to the notion of "collective creative work." (It was the
precisely the possibilities for "collective creative work" that
kept Malevich in Vitebsk for two and a half years.) His article
"O 'la' i kollektive" ("On the Ego and the Collective") — in
which Malevich expresses the views that served as the
theoretical underpinning of Unovis — contains echoes both of
the philosophy of "communality" (filtered through the prism
of Russian Symbolism) and of the doctrines of the ruling
political party, which gave the collective primacy over the
individual: "'Collectivism' is one of the paths designated on
the road map to achieving the 'world-man,' but it is perhaps
still merely one of the necessary crossings restraining on its
main highway millions of egos; it offers only an instant of
forces converging for the perfection of the creative image of
'being'; in it, each ego preserves its individual force, but in
order to move toward perfection the self must be destroyed —
just as religious fanatics destroy themselves before the divine
being, so the modern saint must destroy himself before the
'collective' and before that 'image' which perfects in the name
of unity, in the name of conjunction."9
One of the practical consequences of Malevich's theorizing
was a conscious striving among the members of Unovis for
impersonality and anonymity; they signed their works not
with their own names but with "Unovis." Unovis was among
the first artists' groups in the twentieth century — if not the
very first — to create and exhibit its production under a
collective name. (Obmokhu [the Society of Young Artists] was
for a long time credited with pioneering this practice.
Obmokhu's group signature, however, arose out of entirely
different circumstances; it was the result of artel-style practices
in the executing of commissions.)10
The notion of "collective creative, work" has not been a
recurring feature of Russian culture alone but has enticed
many of the great creative minds of our times. In
postrevolutionary Russia, however, the Utopian doctrines that
had been one wellspring of the state's ideology would be
turned upside down through the creation of a totalitarian
regime, and the country would pay a heavy price for the
attempt forcibly to translate speculative theories into reality.
The dark side of a Utopia of enthusiasts creating a new way of
life according to a single blueprint compulsory for all would
very quickly take its toll on Unovis's founder and his
followers; Malevich would come to know the oppressive might
of the official art that eventually attained power and state
support. In 1927 — with Ginkhuk, which had in some respects
been the successor to Unovis, already closed — Malevich
attached a note to the manuscripts he was leaving in the West,
explaining, with some distress, the nature of those texts:
"[Since I find] myself at the time under revolutionary
influence, there may be powerful contradictions with my
present form of defending Art, i.e., in 1927. These positions
are to be considered genuine."" It must be said, to the credit of
Malevich and his colleagues likewise "under revolutionary
influence," that they never resorted to violent action against
the "old guard." The members of Unovis did not regard
destruction or abolition as their primary task; they were,
rather, creators and cultivators of a new art and a new world.
The legendary anecdotes about Malevich's persecution of
Chagall prove, upon closer inspection, neither simple nor
clearcut.'2 And it is also worth noting that Pen, the academic
painter of the Wanderer school who was Chagall's first teacher,
remained in his workshop at the Vitebsk school throughout
the period that Unovis was based there.
In Malevich's eyes, "collective creative work" greatly
expanded the domain of the new art, and the introduction of
art into life was to be entrusted to a Council for the
Affirmation of New Forms in Art, an elected administrative
body that would be affiliated with the Vitebsk Provincial
Department of People's Education. The "Plan raboty Soveta"
("Agenda of the Council"), which was published in the Unovis
Almanac No. 1, contained five lengthy sections." A good
56
portion of the council's mission was realized by Unovis, even
though the Vitebsk authorities were, naturally, not inclined to
organize such a body.
Unovis went before the Russian art public in June 1920, at
the First All-Russian Conference of Teachers and Students of
Art. Led by Malevich, the members of Unovis brought to
Moscow an exhibition of their work, the Unovis Almanac No. 1
(which had been hurriedly prepared in time for the conference),
and Malevich's On New Systems in Art. A specially printed
handbill, "Ot Unovisa" ("From Unovis," fig. no. 3), was
distributed among the conference participants, who included
representatives from all the provincial Free State Art
Workshops as well as those in Moscow and Petrograd; the
handbill, which opened with an insistent "We want, we want,
we want," issued this appeal: "Under the banner of Unovis, let
everyone join together to clothe the earth in new forms and
meanings." Although the Vitebsk delegates missed the
opening of the conference and arrived near its end, their
projects and programs — notable for their careful thought,
scope, and clarity — their passionate speechmaking, and their
exhibition moved Unovis clearly to the fore.'4 It was also in
June 1920 that Unovis rose to preeminence among the new art
schools and that its influence spread to other cities: direct ties
were established between Vitebsk and Perm1, Ekaterinburg,
Saratov, and Samara (in addition to Smolensk and Orenburg,
where followers of Malevich's — Wkdyskw Strzemihski and
Katarzyna Kobro in the former, and Ivan Kudriashev in the
latter — headed branches of Unovis).
It was with public artistic work — the creation of a "new
utilitarian world of things" — that Unovis launched its
expansion; during 1920—21, there was no undertaking or
holiday in Vitebsk in which Unovis did not have a hand.
Streets, buildings, signboards, trams, and even ration cards
were decorated with Suprematist designs (plate nos. 127-129,
144, 148-150). Unovis had for the time being to work within
the existing environment, and Suprematist designs served,
more often than not, as new ornaments for buildings and
objects of considerably older vintage. Yet the Utopian idea of
transforming the world on the basis of the formal potential of
Suprematism had brought architecture within Unovis's
compass. Architecture, it was generally accepted, was the
necessary starting point of a new synthetic style. "Having
established the specific plans of the Suprematist system,"
Malevich wrote in December 1920, "I am entrusting the
further development of what is already architectural
Suprematism to young architects in the broad sense of the
word, for only in Suprematism do I see an era of a new system
of architecture. ""'
The European Futurists are well known for their
neoromantic schemes for humanity's settlement of the cosmos.
Velimir Khlebnikov, Vasilii Chekrygin, and Malevich .vere
their Russian counterparts, whose way had been prepared by
Nikolai Fedorov's "philosophy of the Common Cause." In 1918,
Malevich had described hypothetical architectural complexes in
such articles as "Architecture as a Slap in the Face to
Ferroconcrete."'6 The formulation "Suprematism is the new
Classicism" would come later, following Unovis's move to
Petrograd, but the need to create new architectural forms was
first recognized, and the initial planning steps taken, in
Vitebsk.'7 The architecture workshop (variously named at
different times) was one of the most popular at the Vitebsk
school and was headed by Lissitzky from the autumn of 1919
until his departure from Vitebsk in late 1920 (whereupon
Chashnik and Khidekel1 became the workshop's guiding
figures). Lissitzky 's talent for "integration" (as Selim Khan-
Magomedov has aptly described it) had exceedingly significant
consequences for Unovis.'8 Lissitzky fostered a strong utilitarian
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fig- 3
"From Unovis, " ip20.
Lithograph, 46x37 cm.
Manuscript Division, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
fig- 4
Unovis: Handbill of the Vitebsk Creative Committee /
{November 20, 1920), with Chashnik's project in center column.
Lithograph, $8.5x51 cm.
Manuscript Division, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
57
bias, and his professional training and striving for practical
results were the bridge that led the innovators of Unovis "out
of cold laboratories" and into the real world.
At the end of 1919, Lissitzky introduced three-dimensional
elements into his new non-objective compositions. Such forms
had, of course, been present in Malevich's earliest Suprematist
works: at the 0.10 exhibition (Petrograd, 1915-16), he had
shown a canvas incorporating a rectangular parallelepiped and
cube. Malevich, however, included three-dimensional forms in
his works only rarely, inasmuch as they engendered an illusory
space that was at odds with the metaphysical space of the
Suprematist canvas. Lissitzky 's "bars," "plates," and "cubes," on
the contrary, became permanent presences in his work, their
execution betraying the practiced hand of the draftsman.
In Lissitzky 's elegant works created under the influence of
Suprematism, lines, planar shapes, and volumetric elements are
combined at will. The "war of opposites," the disharmony that
inevitably arose between surface-planarity and spatiality, was
further exacerbated by Lissitzky 's mixing of perspectives; he
constructed almost every form according to a different
vanishing point. The result was that each element "flew" into
the composition along with the space it occupied and the sdvig
(dislocation or shift) of colliding spaces provoked frustration in
the viewer (the sdvig, of course, would become a favorite device
of the Constructivists).
Lissitzky devised the name proun (from proekt Unovisa
[project of Unovis} or proekt utverzbdeniia novogo [project of the
affirmation of the new]) for these works only following the
birth of Unovis; one does not encounter the term before mid-
1920. (In Lissitzky 's texts in the Unovis Almanac No. 1, the word
"proun" was not employed once, even though a version of the
composition celebrated thereafter as Proun iA: Most I. Eskiz
[Sketch for Proun iA: Bridge 1, 1919—20, plate no. 205] appeared
as an illustration to one of his pieces. The formulations
Lissitzky did use in the Almanac — "projects for new forms of
utilitarian structures," "elaboration of tasks of the new
architecture," and "projects for monumental decorations" —
show him groping for the label that would carry such weight
in the future.)
From the beginning, Lissitzky rejected any and all
orientations in space for his prouns; he intended them to have
neither top nor bottom, hence his use of varying perspectives.
It was in the logic of three-dimensional forms, however, that
they gradually grew heavy, were pulled "to earth," and
demanded a reckoning with the laws of gravity. (It might be
noted that Iakerson, also an architect by training — like
Lissitzky, he had studied in the architecture and building
faculty of the Riga Polytechnic Institute, but his enthusiasm
for sculpture won out over his other interests; at the Vitebsk
Popular Art School, Iakerson replaced Ivan Til'berg as head of
the sculpture workshop'9 — made abundant use of three-
dimensional forms in his work during 1920, yet he did so —
and from the start — entirely in accordance with the laws of
gravity.)
This adaptation of the principles of architectural drawing
to Suprematism (a venture similar to that in which Gustav
Klutsis was engaged at about the same time as Lissitzky, and
perhaps even somewhat earlier) would be a catalyst for
Malevich's arkhitektons.
The practical needs of the new state and of Soviet public
life, which yielded Unovis commissions for decorations for
speaker's rostrums to be used at mass meetings and
demonstrations, were another factor in Suprematism's turn
toward architecture during the Vitebsk years. Initially,
Malevich, Lissitzky, and others confined themselves to
decorating the rostrums' facades with Suprematist designs, into
which they worked slogans and inscriptions, and did not alter
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58
the basic shape of these primitive structures (plate nos. 130,
147). However, Chashnik — one of the most talented of
Malevich's followers and only twenty-six at the time of his
death in 1929 — created a project for a "tribune under the sign
of Suprematism" for a square in Smolensk. Chashnik's project,
illustrated in one of Unovis's publications (fig. no. 4), was later
developed by Lissitzky (plate nos. 140— 141) and served as the
basis for his Leninskaia tribuna {Lenin Tribune. 1924, plate
no. 142). Though acclaim for the Tribune accrued solely to
Lissitzky, he always emphasized that the work was an "Unovis
project."
Malevich's Suprematist system was born of the all-
embracing Cbernyi kvadrat {Black Square, 1915). The abyss of the
Black Square, its philosophical ambiguity — it constituted both
"all" and "nothing," both "non-objectivity" and "omni-
objectivity" — made Malevich's masterpiece a sui-generis
"project," a dense nucleus of meanings that Malevich spent his
entire life extrapolating. Suprematist paintings — self-sufficient
and primary "in the ranks of all the things of the world" — were
the first issue of the Black Square and its infinitude: "With his
brush the artist creates a new sign; this sign is not a form for
apprehending what has already been prepared, built, and
brought into existence in the world — it is a sign of the new, of
what is in the process of being built and appearing in nature
through the artist."20 These Suprematist canvases were,
Malevich wrote, sign-projects containing "proto-images of the
technical organisms of the future Suprematist [world]."11 Thus
projection — the creation of blueprints or plans of the future
Suprematist organization of the world — became the essential
hallmark of Unovis's collective work and "project" the chief
label for its production (a 1920 Unovis periodical, for example,
authored by Chashnik and Khidekel', was entitled Aero. Stat'i
1 proekty [Aero: Articles and Projects]).
The "utilitarian world of things" so passionately proclaimed
by Unovis did not coincide with the world that, during the
same period, the Productivists (the future Constructivists) were
seeking to create. Malevich and the members of Unovis wished
to comprehend the "real" foundations of the universe and its
"organic-natural transformation" — Suprematism acquired an
ontological dimension. Malevich devoted virtually all of his
time in Vitebsk to the writing of philosophical and theoretical
treatises — some of which have yet to be published21 — which
defined the nature of the "utilitarian organisms" that made up
the "unified system of the world architecture of the earth." The
most advanced among Unovis's members understood and
shared Malevich's views. Chashnik, for example, conceived
Suprematist works (which he called outright "blueprints" and
"plans") as projects for and instruments of a new universe and a
new systematization of the world. The aims of the architectural
and technical faculty created in Vitebsk in 1921 included,
according to Chashnik, "study of the system of Suprematist
projection and the designing of blueprints and plans in
accordance with it; ruling off the earth's expanse into squares,
giving each energy cell its place in the overall scheme;
organization and accommodation on the earth's surface of all its
intrinsic elements, charting those points and lines out of which
the forms of Suprematism will ascend and slip into space."2'
The differentiation of real'nost' { reality) from deistvitel'nost'
(actuality) was one of the foundations of Malevich's theory.
"Reality" lay concealed behind the world's objective envelope,
and this envelope had to be torn open and the shackles of
predmetnost' (objectivity) and razum (reason) broken in order to
ensure the appearance of a new "Realism" — first in art and
subsequently in the world at large. "Actuality," by contrast,
was illusoriness incarnate, enslaving man's soul. Malevich and
the members of Unovis aspired to create a new "reality,"
whereas the Productivists and Constructivists remained, in the
nocTpoeHO
1920 Bnteficu
fig. 6
Unovis seal, reproduced in Lissitzky s A Suprematist Tale about
Two Squares, 1922.
59
Unovis view, servants of "actuality" ("lackeys of the factory and
of production," as Malevich acerbically described them). The
rivalry between Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin — who had taken
non-objectivity in such contradictory directions — went back
many years24 and was manifest at the start of the 1920s in the
competition between Unovis and Inkhuk (the Institute of
Artistic Culture) and between Unovis and Obmokhu. The feud
came into the open in December 1921, when more than two
hundred Unovis works were exhibited at Inkhuk (members of
Unovis were there to elucidate their displays, while Malevich
delivered a lecture and participated in discussions)." The
antagonism between Suprematism and Constructivism was
plain to see; the two movements seemed opposite poles in the
artistic transformation of the world.
(Lissitzky had been in Moscow from the end of 1920. A
member of Inkhuk, he espoused a diluted, compromised
version of Suprematism. Lissitzky and Malevich had gone
radically different ways, though their personal relations —
unlike those between Tatlin and Malevich — remained intact.
The title of the journal founded by Lissitzky and Il'ia Erenburg
in Berlin in 1922, Veshch'/Gegenstand/Objet [Object], was a
programmatic one, announcing a certain polemic with the
"non-objectivity" [or "omni-objectivity"] of Suprematism.)
The tension between the poles of Suprematism and
Constructivism that colored numerous areas of early Soviet
artistic life existed inside Unovis, as well. It was not Lissitzky
alone who integrated impulses from one and the other system.
The canvases of Iudin and Tsiperson — who were staunch
adherents of Unovis — used layers of paint to achieve relief
effects; incorporated sawdust, shavings, sand, and even seeds;
and are evidence of the study in Vitebsk of the properties of
heterogeneous materials and of attention to faktura (density).
Moreover, certain members of Unovis — Veksler, Kogan,
Georgii Noskov, Suetin, Khidekel', Chashnik, and Iudin —
graduated from the Vitebsk Practical Art Institute with the
title of "artist-Constructivist."26
Unovis's pedagogical system was an integral part of its
work. Even while Chagall was still at the helm of the Vitebsk
Popular Art School, Unovis proclaimed the creation of a
"Unified Painting Audience." When Chagall left in June 1920,
Ermolaeva became the school's director; when the school was
reorganized as the Vitebsk Practical Art Institute, she became
rector and remained in that position until her own departure
for Petrograd in the summer of 1922 (Malevich was chairman of
the Council of Professors). The Unified Painting Audience was
based on the program evolved by Malevich in the Moscow and
Petrograd State Free Art Workshops. Ermolaeva and Kogan
bore primary responsibility for putting that program into
effect in Vitebsk, with Kogan in charge of the introductory
course and Ermolaeva supervising students' methodical
progress through the disciplines of Cezannism, Cubism, and
Cubo-Futurism. (This advancement "from Cezanne to
Suprematism" replicated Malevich's own evolution.) Malevich's
role was to analyze student assignments and independent work
through lectures and conversations intended to "diagnose" a
student's talents and possibilities.
The implementation of Malevich's program did not,
however, go entirely smoothly, and his analysis of the obstacles
and their causes, as well as his careful observation of students'
progress in apprehending the different systems of painting, led
him to what he subsequently labeled the "theory of the
additional element [pribavochnyi element] in painting." (In
Vitebsk, Malevich used the terms dobavka [supplement] and
dobavocbnyi element [supplementary element].) The essence of his
theory was that each new trend in painting represented an
artistic complex begotten by one specific plastic "gene," a kind
of formula-sign from which, as from the nucleus of a cell, the
complex organisms of Impressionism, Cezannism, Cubism, and
fig- 7
Members of Unovis, ip2i. From left, foreground: Suetin (with black
square sewn to his sleeve), Efros, Veksler, Roiak, unidentified, and
Chervinko: background: Iudin, Chashnik, Ermolaeva, Khidekel'.
Kogan, and Malevich.
60
fig. 8
View of the Unovis display at the Petrograd Artists of All Trends
exhibition, 1923.
fig- 9
Kazimir Malevich
"Unovis (Aff{irmers) of New Forms in Art): Manifesto of the
Suprematists. " May 2, 1924.
Malevich Archive. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
so on evolved. The straight line — the track of a point moving
in space, and Suprematism's fundamental stylistic
component — was declared the Suprematist "gene."
Suprematism's "additional element" was, however, a summit
few of Malevich's followers attained (Malevich critiqued the
work of Ermolaeva and Kogan no less than that of his
students). In 1925, in his article "Vvedenie v teoriiu
pribavochnogo elementa v zhivopisi" ("Introduction to the
Theory of the Additional Element in Painting"), Malevich
would emphasize the Vitebsk origins of his theory and claim
that many of his students had been "ill" from the additional
element of Cezanne's painting, and that they had found the
Cezannist Fal'k more attractive than himself (Fal'k taught in
Vitebsk for several months in 1921, and took a number of
Vitebsk students with him to the Moscow Vkhutemas [the
Higher Artistic-Technical Workshops]; though Fal'k was a
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61
member of the "old guard," Malevich never abandoned his
sympathy and respect for him)/7
To some extent, Unovis's pedagogical practices also
embodied Malevich's notions of "collective reason" and
"collective creative work." The most advanced students became
teaching assistants: they conducted classes, delivered papers
and lectures, and discussed and evaluated student work (and
each other's). Gavris, Georgii Noskov, Suetin, Khidekel1,
Chashnik, and Iudin were serving in such a capacity by 1921.
Khidekel' and Chashnik were responsible, moreover, for
making the architectural and technical faculty the apex of the
school. Chashnik wrote in 1921: "The study and apprehension
of all systems of the new art in our painting faculties lead to
the ultimate real faculty, the architectural and technical
faculty . . . The architectural and technical workshop is the
crucible of all the other faculties of Unovis, to which all
creative individuals, as a unified collective of builders of the
new forms of the world, must aspire."2*
As a thinker, Malevich encouraged reflection and theoretical
speculation in his followers, and under his demanding tutelage,
Kogan, Khidekel', Chashnik, Iudin, and others gradually
revealed a talent for both pedagogical and formal
experimentation. And in order to graduate from the Vitebsk
school, a student had not only to present the Council of
Professors with an art work as his diploma project but to
compose a theoretical treatise.29 Chashnik drew a "Skhema
postroeniia Vit[ebskikh] gos[udarstvennykh}
khudfozhestvennykh] tekhnicheskikh masterskikh"
("Structural Plan of the Vit[ebsk] St[ate] Art[istic]-Technical
Workshops"), awarding to the student who had completed all
courses the title of "consummate learned architect."30 Iudin
recorded his reflections on and experiments with color and
form (the latter conducted in close contact with Ermolaeva) in
his unique diary full of plans and tables. With the help of his
colleagues in Vitebsk, Malevich laid the foundations of the
"creative laboratory institute" which had been envisioned in
the "Agenda" of the Council for the Affirmation of New Forms
in Art and which would become a reality in Ginkhuk.
Malevich was the author of a vast unified oeuvre, in which
the plastic and the verbal, works of art and of philosophy, were
aspects of a single creative utterance about the world. The same
was true of the "collective creative work" of Unovis. The rich
and extensive body of writings by Lissitzky, Ermolaeva, Kogan,
Chashnik, Khidekel', Iudin, Mikhail Kunin, Gavris, Mikhail
Noskov, L. Zuperman, Osip Bernshtein, and others spans a
wide range of genres — essays, treatises, explanatory notes,
programs, projects, diaries, and letters — and is crowned by the
works of Malevich himself, which were published under the
Unovis imprint. Unovis's published works are, however, but
the tip of the iceberg. One can only hope that the important
documents still held in archives will be released and published
in the near future.
It had been owing to Chagall's efforts, during his tenure as
Commissar of Arts for Vitebsk, that a number of canvases by
Russian artists of all movements — from members of Mir
iskusstva (World of Art) to left painters — had been sent to the
city to form the basis of a museum of contemporary art. Under
Malevich's influence — and Malevich had been one of the most
active of the museum reformers during the first months of the
Soviet state — the Vitebsk museum was quickly transformed
from a museum of contemporary art into a museum of
painterly culture. The Vitebsk museum housed the fullest and
most representative collection of Russian avant-garde works —
it had eighteen canvases by Rozanova alone — of any provincial
museum with the exception of the Rostov museum (whose
collection had been assembled by Liubov' Popova). Space for
the collection in Vitebsk was tight, and the majority of the
paintings were stored at the Vitebsk Practical Art Institute.
Temporary exhibitions of these works, often installed according
to Malevich's instructions, were held at the school and served
as material for his lectures and critiques. Malevich, Iudin wrote
in his diary, "rendered a diagnosis" on the works of virtually
every member of the Russian avant-garde.
Unovis was a "party" that accepted all comers; anyone —
poet, musician, actor, or artisan — who wished to promote the
"augmentation" of the world with new forms could join. Natan
Efros, for example, who would become famous as a professional
reader and reciter of poetry, was a member of Unovis's
Tvorkom (the Creative Committee) in 1921. (Being a member
of Unovis was not, however, generally synonymous with being
a Suprematist — the Unovis member had to strive to become a
Suprematist.) In the autumn of that year, Unovis, in
furtherance of its goal of extending its influence to all creative
endeavors, inaugurated the "Unovis Evening," a showcase for
contemporary poetry, music, and theater. The first evening in
the series, held on September 17, 1921, featured Efros in a solo
performance of Maiakovskii's Voina i mir {War and the Universe),
with stage design by Ermolaeva and Tsiperson, and Malevich
reading his own poems."
The Unovis "party," like any other, had its own program
and bylaws. Applicants were required to complete the highly
detailed "Anketa Unovisa" ("Unovis Questionnaire," fig. no. 5).
A Working Committee, elected by all members and soon
renamed the Creative Committee, supervised all "party"
activities. (Once branches of Unovis had been established in
other cities, the Vitebsk committee became the Central
Creative Committee.) It was a collegial body, with no
chairman; Ermolaeva was its secretary, and Bernshtein its clerk
until his early death in 1922. Important documents were
endorsed with the Unovis seal (fig. no. 6), which had been
produced from a drawing by Lissitzky.'2 Malevich, Ermolaeva,
and Kogan were permanent members of the Creative
Committee during 1920-22; Lissitzky, Chashnik, Khidekel',
Gavris, Suetin, Georgii Noskov, Chervinko, Iudin, and Efros
all served on the committee at one time or another.
Unovis either organized or participated in a number of
exhibitions, the first in Vitebsk in February 1920, when works
by members of Posnovis/Unovis were shown as part of the
school's student showcase. In June 1920, Unovis exhibited its
works at the First All-Russian Conference of Teachers and
Students of Art in Moscow. A one-day Unovis exhibition was
held in Vitebsk on March 28, 1921. In December 1921, again in
Moscow, Unovis exhibited at Inkhuk." At a display in Moscow
in March-April 1922 of works by students from the provincial
art schools, those by Unovis were pronounced the most
interesting.'4 Another exhibition was held in Vitebsk in May
1922. At the Erste ritssische Kunstausstellung (First Russian Art
Exhibition) in Berlin during the autumn of 1922, Unovis
displayed its works in a collective entry. Unovis made its final
appearance at the Petrogradskie kbudozbniki vsekh napravlenii
(Petrograd Artists of All Trends) exhibition in Petrograd in 1923.
Its sixty-odd entries, ranging from Cubism to Suprematism,
offered a summation of its work and were exhibited — the
paintings of Malevich not excepted — under the group's name
(fig. no. 8).
Malevich and the members of his "party" assumed that
branches of Unovis would be established throughout the
world, and made several efforts at entering on the international
stage. Unovis sent materials to Germany in 1921, for instance,
and addressed a letter to Dutch artists in February 1922."
Suprematism was "exported" to Poland by Strzemihski and
Kobro, who moved there in the early 1920s, and it served as the
point of departure for Strzemihski's Unizm (Unism) — a Polish
term that echoed the Russian "Unovism."
62
When he established the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius
proclaimed a "joyfully creating commune, for which the
Masonic lodges of the Middle Ages are the ideal prototype" as
his goal. With its own watchword (the "transrational" U-el-el'-
ul-el-te-ka), bylaws, program, and emblems, Unovis was akin to
such a Masonic lodge. The Unovis fraternity's ritual extended
even to the clothing of its members — Malevich himself was a
prime example: his white apparel and white hat dramatized his
passage into white Suprematism, which carried the "white
world (world-structure), affirming the sign of purity of man's
creative life." And in his diary Iudin mentions sewing a special
Unovis red jacket.
Unovis took as its motto Malevich's Suprematist slogan:
"The overturning of the old world of arts will be etched across
your palms," to which, a short while later, "Wear the black
square as a sign of world economy" was appended. And indeed,
Unovis's members sewed the black square, their "Masonic
emblem," onto the cuffs of their sleeves — the part of their
clothing nearest their palms (fig. no. 7). Only Lissitzky
employed the red square as an emblem of Unovis (in his design
for its seal), and that was in tribute to the prevailing
atmosphere in society: "Draw the red square in your workshops
as a sign of the world revolution in the arts." Malevich and the
true Unovis Suprematists always considered the black square —
the "icon" and "zero form" of Suprematism — to be the symbol
of Unovis.
The transfer of art-educational institutions from the
jurisdiction of Narkompros to that of Glavprofobr (the Chief
Administration for Professional Education) in 1921 marked the
beginning of difficult times for Unovis. The Vitebsk teachers
went unpaid for a considerable period; neither the central nor
the local authorities offered the school any support. Unovis's
Utopian trust in the Soviet government's desire to build a new
life on the basis of new forms in art was shattered and revealed
as untenable.
Ten students were graduated from the Vitebsk Practical Art
Institute in May 1922, after which Unovis ceased its activity in
Vitebsk. By the beginning of June, Malevich was in Petrograd,
to which Ermolaeva also returned; one after another, numerous
members of Unovis — including Suetin, Khidekel', Chashnik,
Iudin, Khaia Kagan, Magaril, and Efim Roiak — followed suit.
Many among them became associates of the Institute for the
Study of the Culture of Contemporary Art at the Museum of
Artistic Culture (later Ginkhuk), where Malevich had been
named director. Yet even in Petrograd/Leningrad, Malevich
was unwilling to part with Unovis. His draft of "Unovis
(utv{erditeli] novykh form Iskusstva). Manifest suprematistov"
("Unovis [Aff(irmers) of the New Forms in Art]: Manifesto of
the Suprematists," fig. no. 9) dates from May 1924. '6 And at the
end of 1924, in an open letter to artists in Holland, Malevich
argued the necessity of creating "Unovises" throughout the
world.'7
Malevich's efforts to revive Unovis in new soil did not,
however, meet with success. Under the weight of changed
living conditions and social patterns, the phenomenon born in
Vitebsk vanished. The future will tell us the true worth of the
rich legacy that was left behind.
— Translated, from the Russian, by Jane Bobko
Notes
1. Kazimir Malevich, letter to Mikhail Matiushin, September 8,
1917, Manuscript Division, State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow,
f. XXV/9, 1. 21.
2. On the circumstances of Malevich's move to Vitebsk, see
A. Shatskikh, "K. Malevich v Vitebske," Iskusstvo 11 (1988),
pp. 38-43.
3. Kazimir Malevich, letter to Ol'ga Gromozova, 1920,
Manuscript Division, State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow,
f. XXV/9, 1. i3-i3ob. Published in Shatskikh, "K. Malevich
v Vitebske," p. 43.
4. The first instances of Lazar1 Lisitskii's use of the "article" El,
and then El', are to be found in the Unovis Almanac No. 1. With
the switch to German and the Latin alphabet, he signed his
name "El Lissitzky." There are no grounds for the belief that
Lissitzky chose el' because that is the pronunciation in the
Russian alphabet for the letter /, his first initial; at the time,
the word liudi was the guide to pronunciation. There is no
question that Lissitzky 's unusual name, hardly a pseudonym,
was inspired by Malevich's highly musical "transrational" line,
which had deep meaning for the members of Unovis; Malevich
cited it repeatedly, and Chashnik's 1924 inscription in his
fiancee's album called on her to "remember this madman . . .
whose way of life is U -EL-EL. " See llya Grigorevich Chashnik:
Lyucitel 1902-Leningradl ip2p: Watercolors, Drawings, Reliefs.
catalogue for exhibition at Leonard Hutton Galleries (New
York: Leonard Hutton Galleries, 1979), p. n.
5. Moisei Lerman, conversation with author, Moscow, June 15,
1988.
6. N. Kogan, "O suprematicheskom balete," Al'manakh Unovis
No. 1, 1. 21.
7. The date — April 14th — given in Larissa A. Shadowa, Suche
und Experiment: Aus der Geschichte der russischen und soujetischen
Kunst zwischen ipio und 1930, trans. Helmut Barth (Dresden:
VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1978), p. 309, and in Shatskikh,
"K. Malevich v Vitebske" is incorrect.
8. The Unovis Almanac No. /was "constructed" in five
typewritten copies. Lissitzky 's use of the verb stroit' (to
construct), an obvious synonym for konstruirovat ', is highly
revealing of his evolving approach to the "construction of the
book." The Unovis Almanac No. /played a significant role in
the development of Lissitzky 's book design.
Today there are two known copies of the Almanac, one in
private hands in Moscow, the other in the Manuscript Division,
State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow, f. 76/9. All references in this
essay to the Almanac are to the latter copy. A good portion of
the contents of the Almanac has been published in Shadowa,
Suche und Experiment, pp. 303—17.
9. K. Malevich, "O 'la' i kollektive," Al'manakh Unovis No. 1.
1. 60b.
10. See Aleksandra Shatskikh, "A Brief History of Obmokhu,"
in this volume.
11. Kazimir Malevich, note, May 30, 1927, Malevich Archives,
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Reproduced in Kazimir
Malevich, 1878-ip^, catalogue for exhibition organized by the
State Russian Museum, Leningrad, the State Tretiakov Gallery,
Moscow, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (Amsterdam
and Moscow: Stedelijk Museum, 1988), p. 52.
12. See Alexandra Shatskikh, "Chagall and Malevich in
Vitebsk. History of their relations," Bulletin AlCARC 1-2
(1989), pp. 7-10.
63
13. The "Plan raboty Soveta" has been published in Shadowa,
Suche und Experiment, p. 317.
14. "Materialy I-oi Vserossiiskoi konferentsii uchashchikh
i uchashchikhsia iskusstvu," 1920, Central State Archive
of Russia, Moscow, f. 2306, op. 23, d. 116. See also
G. L. Demosfenova, "K istorii pedagogicheskoi deiatel'nosti
K. S. Malevicha," in Stranitsy istorii otechestvennogo dizaina,
Trudy VNIITE, vyp. 59 (Moscow: Vsesoiuznyi nauchno-
issledovatel'skii institut tekhnicheskoi estetiki, 1989),
pp. 143-70.
15. K. Malevich, Suprematizm. 34 risi/nka (Vitebsk: Unovis,
1920), p. 4.
16. K. Malevich, "Arkhitektura kak poshchechina betono-
zhelezu," Anarkhtia 37 (April 6, 1918).
17. See Shadowa, Suche und Experiment, pp. 90-94.
18. See S. O. Khan-Magomedov, "L. Lisitskii. Rol1 v
stileobrazuiushchikh protsessakh i v stanovlenii dizaina," in
Stranitsy istorii oteckestvennogo dizaina, pp. 24-43, ar>d "Novyi
stil1, ob"emnyi suprematizm i prouny," in Lazar' Markovich
Lisitskii, i8po-ip4i, catalogue for exhibition organized by the
State Tretiakov Gallery, Moscow, and the Stedelijk van
Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (Moscow and Eindhoven: Stedelijk
van Abbemuseum, 1990), pp. 35—42.
19. On Iakerson, see A. Shatskikh, "Dereviannaia skul'ptura
D. Iakersona," in Sovetskaia skid'ptura 8 (Moscow: Sovetskii
khudozhnik, 1984), pp. 160-69.
20. Al'manakb Unovis No. 1, 1. 120b.
21. Malevich, Suprematizm, p. 2.
22. A number of Malevich's previously unpublished texts
appear in D. Sarab'ianov and A. Shatskikh, Kazimir Malevich.
Zhivopis'. Teoriia, forthcoming.
23. II. Chashnik, "Arkhitekturno-tekhnicheskii fakul'tet,"
UNOVIS 2 (January 1921), p. 14.
24. See Charlotte Douglas, "Tatlin and Malevich: History and
Theory 1914-1915" (Paper delivered at the international
symposium, Vladimir Tatlin. Leben. Werk. Wirkung,
Stadtische Kunsthalle, Dusseldorf, November 25—27, 1989).
25. See Vassilii Rakitin, "Malevich und Inkhuk," in Kasimir
Malewitsch zum 100. Geburtstag, catalogue for exhibition
organized by the Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne (Cologne:
Galerie Gmurzynska, 1978), pp. 284-98.
26. "Spisok okonchivshikh Khudozhestvenno-prakticheskii
institut v 1922 godu v mae mesiatse," State Vitebsk Regional
Archive, f. 246, op. 1, d. 260, sviazka 17, 1. 3900b.
27. K. Malevich, "Sorok piat'. Vvedenie v teoriiu
pribavochnogo elementa v zhivopisi," 1925, private archive,
Moscow, pp. 21-22. Malevich wrote a brief article on Fal'k in
1924. See K. S. Malevich, "Fal'k," in K. S. Malevich, The Artist,
Infinity, Suprematism: Unpublished Writings, 1P13-33, ed. Troels
Andersen, trans. Xenia Hoffmann (Copenhagen: Borgens
Forlag, 1978), pp. 125-27.
28. Chashnik, "Arkhitekturno-tekhnicheskii fakul'tet," p. 12,
15-
29. Iudin's diaries for 1922 contain sketches for his diploma
work (Manuscript Division, State Saltykov-Shchedrin Public
Library, St. Petersburg, f. 1000). For Chashnik's diploma work
on "Metod suprematizma" ("The Suprematist Method"), see
llya Grigorevich Chashnik, pp. 20-24.
30. llya Grigorevich Chashnik, no. 57.
31. Izvestiia Vitebskogo gubernskogo Soveta krest'ianskikh, rabochikh
i soldatskikh deputatov 208 (1920).
32. Lissitzky's drawing for the Unovis seal was reproduced on
the final page of his Suprematicheskii skaz pro dva kvadrata
(Berlin: Skify, 1922). Chashnik's "Structural Plan of the
Vittebsk] St[ate] Art[istic]-Technical Workshops" is one of the
documents that bear the seal. See llya Grigorevich Chashnik,
no. 57.
33. This information comes from documents in the State
Vitebsk Regional Archive, f. 837, op. 1, ed. khr. 59, 1. 63, 87,
Illob.
34. Vestnik iskusstv 3-4 (1922), pp. 27-28.
35. K. S. Malevich, "A Letter to the Dutch Artists," in
K. S. Malevich, Essays on Art, Ipi$-ip33, ed. Troels Andersen,
trans. Xenia Glowacki-Prus and Arnold McMillin (London:
Rapp & Whiting, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 183-87. The fate of the
materials sent to Germany is unknown.
36. K. Malevich, "Unovis (utv[erditeli] novykh form
Iskusstva). Manifest suprematistov," May 2, 1924, Malevich
Archive, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
37. K. Malevich, "Otkrytoe pis'mo gollandskim
khudozhnikam Van-Gofu i Bekmanu," Zhizn' iskusstva 50
(1924), pp. 13-14.
64
I
Kazimir Malevich
Red Square (Painterly Realism:
Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions),
ipjf
Oil on canvas, S3 x $} cm-
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
Kazimir Malevich
Supremacist Painting: Eight Red
Rectangles. 191$.
Oil on canvas. 57. J x 48. 5 cm.
Stedeltjk Museum. Amsterdam.
Kazimir Malevich
Four Squares. 1915.
Oil on canvas, 49 x 49 cm.
State Radishchef Art Museum. Saratov.
Kazimir Malevich
Supremacist Painting, /p/y.
Oil on canvas, ioi.fx 62 cm.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
Kazimir Malevich
Untitled, ca. 1916.
Oil on canvas, jj x 53 cm.
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice,
Kazimir Malevich
Suprematism: Non-Objecrive
Composition, igi6.
Oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm.
Museum of Fine Arts, Ekaterinburg.
Kazimir Malevich
Dynamic Suprematism (Supremus
No. 57). 1916.
Oil on canvas. 80.3 x 80. 2 cm.
Tate Gallery. Purchased with assistance
from the Friends of the Tate Gallery.
1978.
8
Kazimir Malevich
Suprematism, 191S-16.
Oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm.
State Lunacharskii Museum of
Fine Arts. Krasnodar.
Kazimir Malevich
Suprematism: Yellow and Black,
1916.
Oil on canvas, jy. 5 x 70. $ cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
10
Kazimir Malevich
Suprematist Composition. 191J.
Oil on canvas. 97. 8 x 66.4 cm.
The Museum of Modern Art. New York.
11
Kazimir Malevich
Black Square, 1929.
Oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm.
State Tret'iakov Gallery. Moscow.
-
12
Ivan Kliun
Ozonizer, 1914.
Oil on canvas, j$x 66 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
13
Ivan Kliun
Landscape Rushing By. ca. 1914-15.
Oil on wood, wire, metal, and porcelain,
j 4 x $8 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
Gift George Costakis.
14
Ivan Kliun
Non-Objective, 1914-15.
Oil on canvas, ji x 62 cm.
Astrakhan Kustodiev Picture Gallery.
15
Ivan Kliun
Landscape Rushing By, 1914.
Oil on canvas, 55. J x 61 cm.
Regional Art Museum, Kirov.
16
Ivan Kliun
Supremacist Composition. 1916.
Oil an board, 35 x 23 cm.
Wilhelm Hack Museum. Ludwigshafen.
17
Ivan Kliun
Non-Objective Composition:
Suprematism, ipi/.
Oil on canvas, 49 x 44 cm.
State Art Museum. laroslavl'.
18
Ivan Kliun
Suprematism. 1915.
Oil on canvas. 89 x 70. 7 cm.
State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
19
Ivan Kliun
Untitled, ipi/.
Oil on paper, 2j x 22. J cm.
Collection George Costakis, Germany.
20
Ivan Kliun
Untitled. 1917.
Oil on paper, x 22. 5 cm.
Collection George Costakis. Germany.
21
Ivan Kliun
Untitled, 1917.
Oil on paper. 27 x 22. 5 cm.
Collection George Costakis. Germany.
22
Ivan Kliun
Untitled, 1917.
Oil on paper, 2J x 22. 5 cm.
Collection George Costakis.
Germany.
23
Ivan Kliun
Untitled, Ipl/.
Oil on paper. 2j x 22. 5 cm.
Collection George Costakis.
Germany.
24
Ivan Kliun
Untitled, ipl/.
Oil on paper. 2/ x 22. 5 cm.
Collection George Costakis. Germany.
25
Ivan Kliun
Untitled, 1917.
Oil on paper, 27 x 22. $ cm.
Collection George Costakis. Germany.
26
Vera Pestel'
Still Life. 1915.
Oil on canvas, 66. 5 x 49 cm.
State Art Museum, Nizhnii Novgorod.
17
Vera Pestel'
Still Life, 1917-18.
Oil on canvas, 78.5 x jo cm.
State Museum of Fine Arts,
Nizhnii Tagil.
i. .j. »i*£=
28
Samuil Adlivankin
Still Life: Non-Objective
Composition. Ip20.
Oil on board. 52. 5 x 41 cm.
State Art Museum, laroslavl'.
30
Ivan Puni
Supremacist Composition, ipi$.
Oil on canvas, 86.$ x $6.$ cm.
Private collection, Zurich.
31
Ivan Puni
Still Life: Relief with Hammer,
1914, restored 1920 by the artist.
Gouache on cardboard with hammer,
80. 5 x 6<j. $ x p cm.
Private collection. Zurich.
32
Ivan Puni
Baths. 191$.
Oil on canvas, with artist-painted frame,
73 x 92 cm.
Private collection, Zurich.
33
Ivan Puni
Relief with Saw, ipi$.
Wood, sheet iron, cardboard, glass, and
gouache, 76 x 72 x if cm.
Private collection, Zurich.
34
Ivan Puni
Supremacist Relief, ipif.
Oil and gouache on wood, cardboard,
and tin, 70 x 50 x p cm.
Private collection, Zurich.
I
35
Ivan Puni
Supremacist Relief Sculpture. 191$.
reconstruction igios.
Painted wood, metal, and cardboard
mounted on wood panel,
$0.8 x jp.j x j. 6 cm.
The Museum of Modern Art, Neu' York.
The Riklis Collection of McCrory
Corporation (fractional gift). 198}.
r.
HUB
36
Aleksei Morgunov
(Non-Objective) Composition.
1 916-17.
Oil on canvas, 88 x 65 cm.
Regional Art Museum, Kaluga.
37
Aleksei Morgunov
Composition No. 1, 1916—17.
Oil on canvas. Jl x 62 cm.
State Lunacbarskii Museum of
Fine Arts, Krasnodar.
38
Mikhail Men'kov
Tramway No. 6 (Cubism), 1914.
Oil on canvas, 82 x $1. J cm.
State Art Museum, Samara.
39
Nadezhda Udal'tsova
Kitchen, ipi$.
Oil on canvas, 161 x 135 cm.
Museum of Fine Arts. Ekaterinburg.
40
Nadezhda Udal'tsova
Painterly Construction, ipi6.
Oil on canvas, 106 x 79 cm.
State Tret 'iakw Gallery, Moscow.
H
41
Mikhail Men'kov
Non-Objective, ipip.
Oil on canvas, 6} x $4 cm.
State Lunacbarskn Museum of
Fine Arts, Krasnodar.
42
Mikhail Men'kov
Newspaper. ipi8.
Oil on canvas, Jl x jl cm.
State Art Museum, Ulianovsk.
43
Mikhail Men'kov
Symphony (Violin), igiS.
Oil on canvas, <5j x 60.5 cm.
State Art Museum. Samara.
44
Ol'ga Rozanova
Room. ipi;.
Oil on canvas. 100 x 77 cm.
State Lunacharskii Museum of
Fine Arts, Krasnodar.
45
Ol'ga Rozanova
Non-Objective Composition
(Flight of an Airplane). ipi$.
Oil on canvas, 118 x 101 cm.
State Art Museum, Samara.
46
Ol'ga Rozanova
Cupboard with Dishes, 1915.
Oil on canvas, 62 x }8 cm.
State Lunacharskn Museum of
Fine Arts, Krasnodar.
47
Ol'ga Rozanova
Non-Objective Composition, ipi6.
Oil on canvas, 78. 5 x 58 cm.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
48
Ol'ga Rozanova
Non-Objective Composition. ipi6.
Oil on canvas, 102 x 94 cm.
Museum of Fine Arts, Ekaterinburg.
49
Ol'ga Rozanova
Non-Objective Composition. ipi6.
Oil on canvas, ji x 66 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
50
Ol'ga Rozanova
Non-Objective Composition, 1916.
Oil on canvas, po x 74 cm.
Museum of Fine Arts, Ekaterinburg.
51
Ol'ga Rozanova
Non-Objective Composition. 1918.
Oil on canvas, 62. 5 x 40.5 cm.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
52
Ol'ga Rozanova
Non-Objective Composition, ipij.
Oil on canvas, 71 x 64 cm.
State Art Museum, Ulianovsk.
S3
Aleksandra Ekster
Movement of Planes. 1916-17.
Oil on canvas, p2.$x /6 cm.
State Museum of Fine Arts.
Nizbmi Tagil.
54
Aleksandra Ekster
Constructive Still Life. 1917.
Oil on canvas, 121 x 100 cm.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
55
Aleksandra Ekster
Non-Objective, 1917.
Oil on canvas. 71 x 53 cm.
Stati Lunacharskii Museum of
Fine Arts. Krasnodar.
56
Aleksandra Ekster
Dynamic Composition, igi6.
Gouache and pencil on paper,
66. j x $o. j cm.
Leonard Hut ton Galleries, New York.
57
Liubov' Popova
Objects, ipif.
Oil on canvas, 61 x 44. $ cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
58
Liubov' Popova
Jug on a Table (Plastic Painting),
ipif.
Oil on cardboard mounted on panel.
59.1x43.3 cm.
State Tret'takov Gallery, Moscow.
Gift George Costakis.
59
Liubov' Popova
Painterly Architectonic with
Three Stripes, 1916.
Oil on canvas, 10 J x 89 cm.
Collection E. V. Murina and
D. V. Sarab'ianov, Moscow.
60
Liubov1 Popova
Portrait, 1916.
Oil on canvas. y_j. S x 355 cm-
Irkutsk Regional Art Museum.
61
Liubov' Popova
Painterly Architectonic. 1917.
Oil on canvas. S3SX 4° cm-
State Surikov Art Museum. Krasnoiarsk.
62
Liubov1 Popova
Painterly Architectonic, ipi/.
Oil on canvas, 44 x 35.5 cm.
Tobolsk State Historical- Architectural
Museum.
63
Liubov' Popova
Paincerly Architectonic, 1917.
Oil on canvas, 106 x 88 cm.
State Lunacharskii Museum of
Fine Arts, Krasnodar.
64
Liubov' Popova
Painterly Architectonic, 1918.
Oil on canvas, 10; x 80 cm.
Regional Historical Museum. Sloboda.
65
Liubov' Popova
Orange Architectonic. Ipi8.
Oil on cardboard, $p x jp. 5 cm.
State Art Museum, laroslavl'.
66
Liubov' Popova
Painterly Architectonic. 1918.
Oil on canvas. io$. s x 8p cm.
Uzbekistan State Museum of Fine Arts.
Tashkent.
67
Aleksandr Vesnin
Non-Objective Composition.
1917-18.
Oil on canvas. Jj. $ x 43 cm.
State Architecture and Art Museum.
Rostov-Iaroslavskii.
68
Aleksandr Vesnin
Composition, 191J-18.
Oil on canvas, 89. 4 x ioy cm.
The Rothschild Art Foundation.
69
Vladimir Tatlin
Complex Corner-Relief, 191$,
reconstruction no. 5 (edition of five) 1982
by Martyn Chalk.
Paint, iron, aluminum, and zinc,
j8.8x 152. 4 x 76.2 cm.
Courtesy Annelyjuda Fine Art, London.
70
Vladimir Tatlin
Counter-Relief. 1914-15-
Iron, copper, wood, and rope. 71 x 118 cm.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
71
Vladimir Baranov-Rossine
Non-Objective, 1918
Oil on canvas, 71 x 51 cm.
State Radishchev Art Museum, Saratov.
72
Vladimir Baranov-Rossine
Composition. 1917—18.
Oil on canvas, 70. 5 x jz <; cm.
State Tret 'takov Gallery, Moscow.
'U&UI2MW2/JIWTP VHi
73
Sofia Dymshits-Tolstaia
Glass Relief, ca. 1920.
Mixed media on glass, steel frame,
24 x 17.5 x J cm.
Courtesy Rosa Esman Gallery,
New York.
74
Sergei Sen'kin
Suprematism, ip22.
Oil on glass, 36.5 x 28 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
75
Sofia Dymshits-Tolstaia
Glass Relief, early 1920s.
Oil on glass, 39 x 44. 2 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
76
Sofia Dymshits Tolstaia
Composition: Compass, ca. 1920.
Sand. rope, aluminum paint, and
oil on canvas. 69 x 53 cm.
State Art Museum. Samara.
77
Vladimir Lebedev
Relief. 1920.
Wood, metal, and oil on board.
S4.7xs3.fcm.
Slate Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
i.
J
r
8
■
-*: ;
78
Vladimir Lebedev
Still Lite with Saw, ip20.
Oil, collage, and wood on plywood,
S5-5 x 80 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
79
Vladimir Lebedev
Still Life with Boot, ip20.
Oil on canvas, ioj x jj cm.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
80
Vladimir Lebedev
Cubism, Ip22.
Oil on canvas, 108 x 62 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
81
David Zagoskin
Construction, 1921—22.
Collage and oil on canvas mounted
on board, 60 x 48. J cm.
State Radishchev Art Museum. Saratov.
• ■ • ' " • ' '
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82
Wfadyskiw Strzeminski
Tools and Products of Industry,
IpIp-20.
Oil, cork, tinplate, metal, and plaster on
canvas mounted on board, 44. 5 x 33 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
83
Wladystaw Strzeminski
Meter, at. rpip.
Cord, ceramic spools, oil. and foil on
board. 81 x 58 cm.
State Art Museum. Samara.
84
Valentin lustitskii
Painterly Easel Construction, 1921.
Oil on canvas, 7f x 89 cm.
State Radishcbev Art Museum. Saratov.
85
Valentin lustitskii
Painterly Easel Construction. 1921.
Oil and wood on board. 46 x 49 cm.
State Radishcbev Art Museum. Saratov.
86
Valentin lustitskii
Painterly Construction with Wire.
early ip20s.
Oil and wire on canvas mounted on
cardboard. 70 x 62 cm.
State Radnhchei' Art Museum. Saratov.
87
88
Vasilii Ermilov
Vasilii Ermilov
Composition, early ip20s.
Composition No. 3, 1925.
Knife, matchbox, wood, and sandpaper,
Construction of wood, brass, varnish, and
48. 7 x 38.2 cm.
paint, 82 x 43 x 7 j cm.
Collection L. Zbadova Family, Moscow.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The Riklis Collection of McCrory
Corporation (fractional gift), 1983.
89
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Cover for Aleksei Kruchenykh. Tsotsa,
IP2I.
Collage and pencil on paper,
17.8 x I}. 8 cm.
A. Al. Rodchenko and V. F. Stepanova
Archive, Moscow.
J-M/f&W
90
Ol'go Rozanova and
Aleksei Kruchenykh
Illustration for Universal War. 1916.
Paper and fabric collage on paper.
21.6 x ij.Scni.
Courtesy La Boette Inc.. New York.
91-96
Olba Rozanova and
Aleksei Kruchenykh
Illustrations for Universal War, 1916.
Paper and fabric collage on paper, all
approximately 21.6 x 51.5 cm
(dimensions vary).
Cabinet des estampes,
Muse'e d'art et d'histoire. Geneva.
97
Varvara Stepanova
The Third Warrior, illustration for
Aleksei Kruchenykh, Gly-gly, 1919-
Collage and india ink on paper,
15. 5 x nan.
A. M. Rodchenko and V. F. Stepanova
Archive, Moscow.
98
Varvara Stepanova
Cover for Rtny kholme, from the series
Colored Graphics, 1918.
Gouache on paper. 2j. 5 x 18.2 cm.
A. M. Rodchenko and V. F. Stepanova
Archive. Moscow.
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99
Varvara Stepanova
Sketch for Study the Old, but Create
the New, ca. ipip.
Gouache on paper, 26.2 x 22.5 cm.
Collection Krystyna Gmurzynska-Bscher,
Cologne.
100
Vladimir Kozlinskii
Poster, Long Live May 1st!, 1920-21.
Gouache, watercolor, and whiting on
cardboard, 100 x 66.$ cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
101
Ivan Puni
Sketch for decoration ofLiteinyi Avenue,
Petrograd, ipi8.
Watercolor, india ink, and whiting
on paper, 62 x 47. 4 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
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102
Ivan Puni
Still Life with Letters: "Spectrum,"
"Flight," 1919.
Oil on canvas. 124 x 127 cm.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
103
Natan Al'tman
Design for decorations for Palace Square.
Petrograd. for the first anniversary of the
October Revolution: design for the passage
between the Winter Palace and
Exerzierhaus. Ipl8.
Col /age. watercolor. and india ink on
paper. 20. 6 x ty 2 cm.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
104
Natan Al'tman
Design for decorations for Palace Square,
Petrograd. for the first anniversary of the
October Revolution. 1918.
Oil on plywood, $2 x 72. 5 cm.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
105
Natan Al'tman
Design for decorations for Palace Square.
Petrograd, for the first anniversary of the
October Revolution: design for the General
Staff Arch. 1918.
India ink. colored paper, and collage on
cardboard, 22 x 28.5 cm.
State Museum of the History of the City
of St. Petersburg.
106
Natan Al'tman
Design for decorations for Palace Square,
Petrograd, for the first anniversary of the
October Revolution, 1918.
India ink. pencil, collage, and colored
paper on cardboard. _J7 x 32.5 cm.
State Museum of the History of the City
of St. Petersburg.
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107
Natan Al'tman
Russia: Work, ip2l.
Charcoal on paper mounted on mahogany.
p8. 2 x 4p.j cm.
State Tret'takov Gallery, Moscow.
108
Natan Al'tman
Pecrocommune, 1921.
Oil and enamel on canvas. 104 x 88. 5 cm.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
109
Gustav Klutsis
Workers of the World, Unite!.
design for propaganda kiosk, screen,
and loudspeaker platform, 1922.
'Watercolor, ink, and pencil on paper,
32. 9 x 24 cm.
Collection George Costakis, Germany.
110
Gustav Klutsis
Project for a construction for the fifth
anniversary of the October Revolution,
1922.
India ink and watercolor on paper,
68 x 49. 2 cm.
State Tret 'takov Gallery, Moscow.
r™rir% \
Ill
Gustav Klutsis
Design for Screen/Radio-Orator No. 5,
1922.
Colored india inks and pencil on paper,
26.6 x 14.7 cm.
Collection George Costakis. Germany.
112
Gustav Klutsis
Design for a screen, 1922.
Watercolor and india ink on paper,
24. 6 x 16. $ cm.
Collection George Costakis. Germany.
113
Gustav Klutsis
Design for a stand, 1922.
India ink on paper, 17. 5 x 26.7 cm.
State Art Museum of Latvia, Riga.
Tfi*fl!U, 2U.
114
Aleksandr Vesnin
Proposal for a Monument to the
Third Congress of the Communist
International, ip2I.
Gouache on paper, jj x JO. J cm.
The Museum of Modern Art. New York.
Acquired through the Mrs. Harry Lynde
Bradley and the Katherine S. Dreier
Bequests.
115
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Newspaper Stand, ipip.
India ink, watercolor, pencil, and varnish
on paper, 53. Sx 35-5 cm-
A. M. Rodchenko and V. F. Stepanova
Archive, Moscow.
116
Aleksei Morgunov
Sketch for cover for Art International,
1919.
Pencil and gouache on paper,
31.7 x 23. 8 cm.
Central State Archive for Literature
and Art, Moscow.
117
Sofia Dymshits-Tolstaia
Study for cover for Art International,
ipip.
Gouache, collage, and varnish on paper,
16 x 20. 6cm.
Central State Archive for Literature
and Art, Moscow.
118
Antonina Sofronova
Study for banner, Central Committee
of the Textile Workers Union, 1922.
India ink, gouache, and collage on paper,
28. 6 x 21. 1 cm.
Collection Krystyna Gmurzynska-Bscher,
Cologne.
119
Antonina Sofronova
Study for banner, Food Workers
Union, 1922.
Collage on paper, 24. 4 x 17 cm.
Collection Krystyna Gmurzynska-Bscher,
Cologne.
120
Antonina Sofronova
Study for banner. Central Committee
of the Textile Workers Union,
not dated.
Ink. gouache, and collage on paper,
jo x 20 cm.
Collection Krystyna Gmurzynska-Bscher,
Cologne.
VUrS-
121
Vasilii Ermilov
Exhibition project, Kanatka, 1928.
Gouache and collage,
j&jx 27.5 cm.
Museum Ludwig (Collection Luduig.
Cologne).
122
Vasilii Ermilov
Relief, 1924.
Wood, metal, and oil on sandiloth,
77. $x 77.5 cm.
Galena Dr. Istvan Schlegl, Zurich.
123
Kazimir Malevich
Cover for document folder for the Congress
of Committees on Rural Poverty, ipi8.
Lithograph. 42. 2 x 64 cm.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
124
Kazimir Malevich
Study for cover for document folder for the
Congress of Committees on Rural Poverty.
1918.
Gouache, indta ink, and watercolor on
paper, 32. 7 x 41.3 cm.
Pushkin House, St. Petersburg.
125
Kazimir Malevich
Study for cover for document folder for the
Congress of Committees on Rural Poverty.
Ipl8
Gouache, india ink, and watercolor on
paper, 28. p x 2p cm.
Pushkin House, St. Petersburg.
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KOMI/lTETOB
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126
Kazimir Malevich
Principle of Mural Painting, ipip.
Gouache, watercolor, and ink on paper,
34 x 24, 8 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
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127
Vera Ermolaeva
Supremacist Construction, sketch for
festive decoration of Vitebsk, ip20.
Graphite pencil, india ink, and
watercolor on paper, 13.5 x 20. 7 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
128
Vera Ermolaeva
Suprematist Construction, sketch for
festive decoration of Vitebsk, 1920.
Watercolor and india ink on paper,
20. 5 x 11. 4 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
129
Vera Ermolaeva
Suprematist Construction, sketch for
festive decoration of Vitebsk, 1920.
Watercolor and india ink on paper,
iy. 4 x 11. 4 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
130
Kazimir Malevich
Speaker's rostrum. 1 9 20.
Watercolor and mdia ink on paper.
24. 8 x ft. 8 cm (recto and verso).
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
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131
Ivan Kudriashev
Design for the First Soviet Theater,
Orenburg, ip20.
Watercolor, ink, and pencil on paper
mounted on board, 21. 2 x 53.4 cm.
Collection George Costakis, Germany.
132
Ivan Kudriashev
Design for the First Soviet Theater,
Orenburg, 1920.
Pencil and gouache on paper mounted on
board, I}.} x }p cm.
Collection George Costakis, Germany.
133
Ivan Kudriashev
Automobile, sketch for decoration for the
first anniversary of the October
Revolution, Moscow, I pi 8.
Watercolor and graphite pencil on paper
mounted on cardboard, 24. 8 x 54. 6cm.
State Tret 'takov Gallery, Moscow.
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134
El Lissitzky
Untitled (Rosa Luxemburg), 1919—20.
Gouache, pencil, and ink on paper.
9.7 x 9,7 cm.
Collection George Costakis, Germany.
135
El Lissitzky
Study for poster (variant), Proletarian
Postal Workers, Remember the Year
1905, 1919-20.
Gouache, india ink, and graphite pencil
on paper, 18. 2 x 22.9 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
136
El Lissitzky and
Kazimir Malevich
Suprematism, study for curtains for the
meeting room of the Committee to Abolish
Unemployment, ipip.
Gouache, watercolor, graphite pencil, and
india ink on paper, 49 x 62. 5 cm.
State Tret 'takov Gallery, Moscow.
137
Artist Unknown
Smolensk Rosta poster. Organize a
Week of the Red Gift Here and
Everywhere, ca. 1920.
Lithograph, 26.5 x 58.J cm.
Collection Merrill C. Berman.
138
El Lissitzky
Poster, Beat the Whites with the
Red Wedge. 1920.
Lithograph, 49 x 69 cm.
Lenin Library, Moscow.
139
Nikolai Kolli
The Red Wedge, decoration for the first
anniversary of the October Revolution,
Moscow, perspective, ipi8.
Pencil, watercolor, and india ink on
paper, 33 x 20. 5 cm.
State Shchusev Aluseum, Moscow.
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140
ll'ia Chashnik and
El Lissitzky
Project for a tribune for a square in
Smolensk, 1920.
Gouache, graphite pencil, and india
ink on paper, 48,2 x 37.8 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
142
El Lissitzky
Lenin Tribune, 1924.
Gouache, india ink, and photomontage on
cardboard, 63. 8x 48 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
141
ll'ia Chashnik and
El Lissitzky
Project for a tribune for a square in
Smolensk. 1920.
Gouache, graphite pencil, and india
ink on paper, }} x 57. 8 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
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143
El Lissitzlcy
Tatlin at Work, illustration for
ll'ia Erenburg, Six Tales with Easy
Endings, 1921-22.
Watercolor, pencil, and photomontage on
paper, 29. 2 x 22.8 cm.
Eric Estorick Family Collection.
.
144
Aleksandr Tseitlin
Ration Card. 1920.
Gouache, india ink, and graphite pencil
on paper, iy. 5 x 18. 8 cm.
State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
145
Nikolai Suetin
Study for cover for Maksim Gor'ku.
Vladimir Lenin, 1924.
Watercolor and ink on paper,
2$. IX 19.3 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
146
Ilia Chashnik
Platter, Lenin. 1924.
Porcelain.
Central Lenin Museum. Moscow.
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147
Nikolai Suetin
Project for Unovis Tribune, ign.
Gouache on paper, 35. 8 x 26. J cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
148
Nikolai Suetin
Train Car with Unovis Symbol en
Route to the Exhibition in Moscow,
ip20.
Watercolor, india ink, and gouache on
paper, 2 J. $x 4}. 8 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
149
Nikolai Suetin
Project: Decoration of a Vitebsk
Tramcar. Ip2l.
Colored ink on paper, 43 x 62.5 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
150
Nikolai Suetin
Project for a Signboard, 1920.
Gouache on paper, 26. 7 x _jj. 7 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
151
Nina Kogan
Study for set design for a Suprematist
ballet, Vitebsk, ip20.
Gouache, watercolor, and india ink on
paper, 22 x }l. J cm.
St. Petersburg State Museum of Theater
and Musical Arts.
152
Vera Ermolaeva
Set design for Aleksei Kruchenykh,
Victory over the Sun, Vitebsk, ip20.
Woodcut with watercolor additions,
16.7 x 20 cm.
Private collection, Germany.
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153
Kazimir Malevich
Study Suprematis 52 System A4, 191J.
Charcoal and watercolor on cardboard,
69 x 49 cm.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
154
Kazimir Malevich
Suprematist Drawing, 191/.
Pencil and black chalk on paper,
$2 x 24.5 cm.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
155
Kazimir Malevich
Vertical Suprematist Construction,
1917.
Pencil on paper, 46 x 33. j cm.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
156
Kazimir Malevich
Vertical Construction (Suprematist),
1917.
Black chalk on paper, 41 x 29.5 cm.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
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157
Kazimir Malevich
Suprematist Painting. 1921—27?
Oil on canvas, 84 x 69. 5 cm.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
158
Kazimir Malevich
Future Planits for Leningrad:
Pilot's House. 1924.
Graphite pencil on paper, 30. 5 x 45 cm.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
159
Kazimir Malevich
Modern Buildings: Suprematism,
1925-24.
Pencil on paper, 36 x 53.5 cm.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
160
Kazimir Malevich
Arkhitekton "Alpha ", 1925-24.
Plaster, 51. $x 80.5 x 54 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
161
Kazimir Malevich
Supremacist Painting, 1921-27?
Oil on canvas, 72. fx 51cm.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
162
Kazimir Malevich
Sketch for Fabric Ornament No. iz.
ipip.
Watercolcr and tndia ink on paper.
$6.2x 27 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
163
Kazimir Malevich
Fabric Ornament No. 15 for
Batiste and Cotton, ipip.
Graphite pencil on paper, $$. 6x 27 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
164
Kazimir Malevich
Motifs for a Suprematist Fabric, ipip.
Watercolor on paper, 36. 2 x 2J cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
165
Kazimir Malevich
Fabric Ornament No. 10 for Cotton,
ipip.
Watercolor on paper, 35. 8x 27. 1 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
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166
Nikolai Suetin
Textile design, 1924.
Watercolor on paper. 18. $x 28.2 cm.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
167
Nikolai Suetin
Textile design. 1921-22.
Watercolor and india ink on paper.
Ip.6x 28.1cm.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
168
Nikolai Suetin
Composition with Yellow Stripe,
early 1920s.
Oil on plywood, 39.8 x 39.5 cm.
State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
169
Nikolai Suetin
Black Square, early 1920s.
Oil on plywood, }?■ $ x 39. 5 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
170
ll'ia Chashnik
Design for a cigarette case; three
variations. 1927—28.
India ink and silver paint on paper,
$2.8x 47.6cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
171
ll'ia Chashnik
Design for applied art, 1926-27
Colored ink on paper, 47. 9 x } }. 2 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
172
ll'ia Chashnik
Design for applied art, 1927-28.
Colored ink on paper, 47.3 x $2.9 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
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173
ll'ia Chashnik
Suprematism. 1922-2}.
Oil on canvas. S$ x $j cm.
State Tret'iakov Gallery. Moscow.
Gift George Costakis.
174
ll'ia Chashnik
Vertical Axes in Motion, 1922-23.
India ink and watercolor on paper,
2p x 21.6 cm.
Leonard Hutton Galleries. New York.
175
ll'ia Chashnik
Red Square (Unovis), 1921.
Watercolor and india ink on paper,
21. 4 x 19.4 cm.
Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York.
176
ll'ia Chashnik
Color Lines in Vertical Motion,
1923-25.
Watercolor on paper, }$. 5 x 25.5 cm.
Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York.
177
ll'ia Chashnik
Circles in a Suprematist Cross, 1926.
Watercolor, india ink, and pencil on
paper, 29. 8 x 20. p cm.
Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York.
178
ll'ia Chashnik
The Seventh Dimension: Supremacist
Stripe Relief, 1925.
Painted wood, paper, cardboard, and
glass, 26 x 22. $x 1.4 cm.
Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York.
179
ll'ia Chashnik
Study for advertising poster, Soviet
Screen No. 4, 1920s.
Black and red india ink on paper,
p8x 66 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
180
ll'ia Chashnik
Architectonic Relief, Ip26.
Plaster mounted on board,
16.4 x 18.JX 2.6 cm.
The Rothschild Art Foundation.
181
ll'ia Chashnik
Suprematist Cross Architecton, 1926.
Pencil on paper, 22 x ij. 5 cm.
Leonard Hutton Galleries, New York.
182
ll'ia Chashnilc
Cosmos — Red Circle on Black
Surface, 1925.
India ink and watercolor on paper,
S7-2X $z8cm.
Collection Thomas P. Whitney.
183
ll'ia Chashnik
Supremolec (Suprematist Planit).
1927-28.
India ink on paper, 62. 4 x 84. 6 cm.
Collection Lew Nussberg, United States.
184
Ilia Chashnik
Design for Supremolet, 192 J.
Pencil and india ink on paper.
50. 9 x J 1. pern. 62. 8 x 84.8cm matted.
Collection Lew Nussberg. United States.
185
Kazimir Malevich
Teapot, 192}. reproduction early 1970s.
Porcelain, id 5 cm high.
State Historical Museum, Moscow.
186
Kazimir Malevich
Model for a cup, 192}, reproductions I(,
by lurii Kraivanov.
Porcelain, Dmitrov Porcelain Factory
(reproduction), 6.$ cm high,
9 cm diameter.
Kuskovo State Porcelain Museum.
187
Kazimir Malevich
Plate with Suprematist design, 1923.
Porcelain, 24. 8 cm diameter.
Gilman Paper Company Collection.
188.1
ll'ia Chashnik
Soup bowl. Supremansm. 1920s.
Overglaze and stenciling on porcelain.
State Porcelain Factory. Petrograd.
25 cm diameter.
Kuskovo State Porcelain Museum.
188.2
Nikolai Suetin
Plate. 192}.
Overglaze and stenciling on porcelain.
Lomonosov Porcelain Factor). Leningrad.
2} cm diameter.
Kuskovo State Porcelain Museum.
190
Nikolai Suetin
Cup and saucer. Suprematism. 1923.
Overglaze on porcelain. State Porcelain
Factory. Petrograd. cup 6. 5 cm high.
7 cm diameter, saucer 14. 5 cm diameter.
Kuskovo State Porcelain Museum.
189
Nikolai Suetin (design) and
Varvara Rukavishnikova
(execution)
Cup and saucer. 192}.
Overglaze on porcelain. State Porcelain
Factory. Petrograd. cup 7 J cm high.
saucer 15. 9 cm diameter.
Kuskovo State Porcelain Museum.
191
Nikolai Suetin and
ll'ia Chashnik
Inkstand. 1923-25.
Overglaze on porcelain. State Porcelain
Factory. Petrograd. 6. 5 cm high.
1} x 16 cm base.
Kuskovo State Porcelain Museum.
192
Irina Rozhdestvenskaia
Tea service with Supremacist design,
1930-31.
Stenciling on porcelain, creamer 8.8 cm
high, sugar haul 8.3 cm high, cup 5.6 cm
high, saucer 15.1cm diameter, cup 5.6 cm
high, saucer 15. 1 cm diameter.
State Historical Museum. Moscow.
193
Nikolai Suetin
Tea service with Suprematist design. 1930.
Overglaze on porcelain, sugar bowl 10. 2 x
13.2 x 10.6 cm, cup J.J x 11. 3 x p. 7 cm,
saucer 15 cm diameter, teapot 13. J x 10. 3 x
8.3 cm, creamer 13.5 x 10. 3 x 8.3 cm, cup
5.5 x II. 3 x p. 7 cm, saucer 1$ cm diameter.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
194
Nikolai Suetin
Plate with Suprematist design, 1930.
Painting on porcelain, 22. 4 cm diameter.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
195
Nikolai Suetin
Tea service with black-and-green
Suprematist design. 19}0.
Porcelain, teapot 1% 4 x 21.5 x 12 cm,
cup 7. J x p. 5 x 7. 4 cm, saucer 14, 6 cm
diameter, sugar howl II. 7 x 15.3 x
10. 5 cm. tray }$ cm diameter, creamer
11. 5 x 13. 8 x p. 3 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
196
Nikolai Suetin
Vase. 1933.
Porcelain. Lomonosov Porcelain Factory.
Leningrad, 23. J cm high.
7 j x 6.2 cm base.
Kuskovo State Porcelain Museum.
197.1
Nikolai Suetin
Vase. 192J— early 1930s.
Porcelain. Lomonosov Porcelain Factory.
Leningrad. 25. 5 cm high.
p. j x p. $ cm base.
Kuskovo State Porcelain Museum.
197.2
Nikolai Suetin
Vase, early IP30S.
Porcelain. Lomonosov Porcelain Factory,
Leningrad. 24. 5 cm high,
12 x 12 cm base.
Kuskovo State Porcelain Museum.
198
Lev ludin
Composition, lp2I.
Graphite pencil on paper, p.8x J. 2 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery. Moscow.
199
Lev ludin
Composition, ip20—2i.
Ink, black and graphite pencil, and
gouache on paper, 21. 1 x 12.8 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
200
Lev ludin
Composition (Head), ip2i.
Graphite pencil on paper, 18. $ x II cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery. Moscow.
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201
Lev ludin
Cubism, 1920—21.
Oil on canvas, 42 x 28 cm.
State Lunacharskii Museum of
Fine Arts, Krasnodar.
202
Lev Tsiperson
Cubism. Ip20.
Oil on canvas, yi x $4 cm.
State Radishchev Art Museum, Saratov.
203
Ivan Gavris
Violin (Cubism), Ip20.
Oil on canvas, 107 x jo cm.
State Lunacharskii Museum of
Fine Arts, Krasnodar.
204
Attributed to El Lissitzky
Composition, ipip.
Oil on canvas. Ji x $8 cm.
State Museum of Ukrainian Art. Kiev.
205
El Lissitzky
Sketch for Proun iE: Town. 1919-20.
Graphite and gouache on paper,
18. 1 x 22.8 cm.
Erii Estorick Family Collection.
206
El Lissitzky
Sketch for Proun iA: Bridge I.
1919-20.
Gouache on paper. 8. 5 x is cm.
Eric Estorick Family Collection.
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207
El Lissitzky
Town, ipip-20.
Oil and sand on plywood, 47 x 6}.$ cm.
State Mustafaev Azerbaijan Museum
of Art, Baku.
208
El Lissitzky
Construction Floating in Space,
1920.
Lithograph with graphite annotations,
49.8 x 51,1cm.
Collection Maslach Family.
209
El Lissitzky
Proun P23, No. 6. 1919.
Oil on canvas. 52 x 77 cm.
Eric Estorick Family Collection.
210
El Lissitzky
System of the Theater, from Figures
from A. Kruchenykh's Opera
"Victory over the Sun," 1920—21.
Watercolor, gouache, and graphite and
black pencil on paper. 49. 4 x 57. 9 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery. Moscow.
211
El Lissitzky
Study for cover for Figures from
A. Kruchenykh's Opera "Victory over
the Sun," 1920-21.
Gouache, india ink. and graphite pencil
on paper, 49. 4 x $7.9 cm.
State Tret'iakw Gallery, Moscow.
212
El Lissitzky
The New One. from Figures from
A. Kruchenykh's Opera "Victory over
the Sun," 1920-21.
Gouache, india ink, silver paint, and
graphite pencil on paper, 49. 4 x 57.9 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
213
El Lissitzky
Troublemaker, from Figures from
A. Kruchenykh's Opera "Victory
over the Sun," 1920-21.
Gouache, India ink, silver paint, and
graphite and black pencil on paper,
49 4 x 37? cm-
State Tret 'takov Gallery, Moscow.
214
El Lissitzlcy
Cowards, from Figures from
A. Kruchenykh's Opera "Victory over
the Sun," 1920-21.
Gouache, india ink. and graphite and
black pencil on paper. 49. 4 x 37. 9 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery. Moscow.
215
El Lissitzky
Sportsmen, from Figures from
A. Kruchenykh's Opera "Victory over
the Sun," 1920-21.
India ink. gouache, varnish, and
graphite and black pencil on paper.
49- 4 x 37? cm-
State Tret'iakor Gallery, Moscow.
216
El Lissitzky
Reader, from Figures from
A. Kruchenykh's Opera "Victory over
the Sun," 1920-21.
Gouache, india ink, silver paint,
varnish, and graphite and black pencil
on paper, 49. 4 x 37.9 cm.
State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
217
El Lissitzky
Old-Timer, from Figures from
A. Kruchenykh's Opera "Victory over
the Sun," 1920-21.
Gouache, india ink, varnish, and
graphite and black pencil on paper,
49.4 x 37.9 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
218
El Lissitzky
Futurist Strong Man, from Figures
from A. Kruchenykh's Opera
"Victory over the Sun," 1920—21,
Gouache, india ink, and graphite and
black pencil on paper, 49.4x37.9 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
219
El Lissitzky
Gravediggers, from Figures from
A. Kruchenykh's Opera "Victory
over the Sun," 1920—21.
India ink, gouache, varnish, silver paint,
and graphite pencil on paper,
49- 4 x 57? cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
220
El Lissitzky
Proun 93 (Spiral), ca. 192}.
Pencil, india ink, ink, gouache, and
colored pencil on paper, 49.9 x 49.7 cm.
Staatltche Galerie Moritzburg, Halle.
221
El Lissitzky
Study for Proun G7, ca. Ip22.
Collage, watercolor, crayon, and graphite
on cardboard, 47. p x jp cm.
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
222
Lazar' Khidekel1
Yellow Cross, Ip2j.
Oil on canvas, $} x 62 cm.
Collection M. L. Khidekel',
St. Petersburg.
223
Sergei Sen'kin
Non-Objective Composition. Ip20.
Oil on cardboard. 100 x 81 cm.
Museum of Fine Arts. Ekaterinburg.
224
El Lissitzky
Proun H333, 192}.
Gouache and collage with multicolored
paper and airbrush on paper,
44- 5 x 44 cm-
Private collection, Munich.
225
Khaia (Anna) Kagan
Composition. 192J-28.
Oil on canvas, 100 x S5 cm.
Col lectum V. A. Dudakov and M. K.
Kashitro, Moscow.
226
Khaia (Anna) Kagan
Decorative tray, ca. 1925.
Overglaze on faience, 30 cm diameter,
excluding handles.
Collection V. A. Dudakov and M. K.
Kashuro. Moscow.
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227
Khaia (Anna) Kagan
Supremacism (Composition), 1928.
Oil on canvas, 88 x 66 cm.
Museum Ludung (Collection Ludwig,
Cologne).
228
Vasilii Kandinskii
Red Spot II, 1921.
Oil on canvas. 131 x 181 cm.
Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus.
Munich.
229
Vasilii Kandinskii
White Cross. January-June 1922.
Oil on canvas. 100.$ x no. 6 cm.
Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Venice.
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230
Vasilii Kandinskii
Composition: Gray Oval, 1917.
Oil on canvas. 105 x 133.5 cm-
Museum of Fine Arts. Ekaterinburg.
231
Vasilii Kandinskii
Composition No. 224 (On White I).
1920.
Oil on canvas, 95 x 138 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
232
Vdsilii Kandinskii
White Oval, 1919.
Oil on canvas, So x 9} cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
233
Vasilii Kandinskii
Blue Segment. ip2i.
Oil on canvas, 120. 6x140.1 cm.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
New York.
234
Vasilii Kandinskii
White Center, ip2i.
Oil on canvas, 118. yxi}6.$cm.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York. Hilla Rebay Collection.
235
Vasilii Kandinskii
Circles on Black. ip2i.
Oil on canvas, i}6.$x 120 cm.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
Neu' York.
236
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Composition No. 64/84 (Abstraction
of Color: Elimination of the Density
ofColorj, Ipi8.
Oil on canvas, 74. 5 x 74.5 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
237
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Black on Black, 1918.
Oil on canvas, 84. 5 x 6j cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
238
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Points: Composition No. 119. ip20.
Oil on canvas, 47 x }J. 5 cm.
Galerie Gmurzynska. Cologne.
239
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Composition No. 66/86 (Density and
Weight), ipip.
Oil on canvas, 122.} x 73 cm.
State Tret'iakof Gallery, Moscow.
240
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Non-Objective Painting: Black on
Black. 1918.
Oil on canvas, 81. 9 x 79.4 cm.
The Museum of Modern Art. New York.
Gift of the artist, through Jay Leyda.
1936.
241
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Non-Objective Painting (Lines),
ipip.
Oil on canvas. 84.$ x 71. 1 cm.
The Museum of Modern Art. Neu' York.
Gift of the artist, through Jay Leyda,
1956.
242
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Non-Objective Composition, 1918.
Oil on board. 55 x 21 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
243
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Dissipation of a Plane. 1921.
Oil on canvas. 79 x 70. J cm.
A. M. Rodchenko and V F. Stepanova
Archive, Moscow.
244
Vladimir Stenberg
Composition, Ip20.
Colored penal on paper, 21 x /J. g cm.
Collection George Costakis, Germany.
245
Vladimir Stenberg
Construction, ip20.
Ink on paper, 25. 4 x lp.$ cm.
Collection George Costakis, Germany.
246
Konstantin Medunetskii
Composition, Ip20.
Pencil and orange crayon on paper,
26.8 x 23. 4 cm.
Collection George Costakis, Germany.
247
Konstantin Medunetskii
Construction, Ip20.
Brown ink on paper, 2J x ip.icm.
Collection George Costakis, Germany.
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249
Karl loganson
Construction. ip2i.
Colored penal and penal on paper,
}i.8 x 24.3 cm.
Collection George Costakis, Germany.
248
Karl loganson
Composition. ip2i.
Colored pencil, ink. and penal on paper.
24. 1 x }2.$ cm.
Collection George Costakis. Germany.
A.
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.
250
Boris Korolev
Construction, ip2i.
Penal on paper, jj. 4 x 25.9 cm.
Collection George Costakis. Germany.
251
Boris Korolev
Composition, 1921.
Pencil and gouache on paper,
16. 1 x 10. 6 cm.
Collection George Costakis, Germany.
252
Aleksei Babichev
Composition, ip2i.
Pencil on paper, 49. 5 x 34. 5 cm.
Collection George Costakis, Germany.
253
Aleksei Babichev
Construction, ip2i.
Ink, gouache, and pencil on paper,
$2. 1 x 28. 2 cm.
Collection George Costakis, Germany.
Ar*r.
254
Nadezhda Udal'tsova
Red Nude, ipip.
Oil on canvas. 70 x 70 cm.
State Architecture and Art Museum.
Rostoi'-laros/aiskii.
255
Aleksandr Drevin
Suprematism. 1921.
Oil on canvas, ioj. 2 x 86. 8 cm.
Yale University Art Gallery.
Gift Societe Anonyme.
256
Aleksandr Drevin
Painterly Composition. 1921.
Oil on canvas, 124 x p$ cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
257
Liubov' Popova
First Half of the Spectrum, from her
response to Vasiln Kandinskii's Inkhuk
Questionnaire on color, ip20.
Gouache on paper, 21 x 2J cm.
State Tret'iakov Gallery. Moscow.
258
Liubov1 Popova
First Half of the Spectrum, from her
response to Vasilii Kandinskii's Inkhuk
Questionnaire on color. Ip20.
Gouache on paper, ip.2 x 2 /.6 cm.
State Tret'iakov Gallery. Moscow.
259
Liubov' Popova
First Half of the Spectrum, from her
response to Vasilii Kandinskii's Inkhuk
Questionnaire on color, ip2i.
Gouache on paper, lj.$x 41.} cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
260
Liubov' Popova
First Half of the Spectrum, from her
response to Vasilii Kandinskii's Inkhuk
Questionnaire on color, ip20.
Gouache on paper, ij. 7 x 42.2 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
\
261
Liubov' Popova
Untitled, 1920.
Gouache and paper collage on paper,
}0 x 25.2 cm.
Leonard Hut ton Galleries. New York.
262
Liubov' Popova
Composition, 1920.
Gouache and paper collage on paper.
44. 4 x 30 cm.
Private collection.
263
Liubov' Popova
Composition. 1921.
Gouache on paper, 34.3 x 27. J cm.
Collection George Costakis. Germany.
264
Aleksandr Vesnin
Cover for exhibition catalogue,
5 x 5 = 25. 1921.
Pencil, oil, and whiting on cardboard,
22 x 12. 6 cm.
State Shchusei' Museum, Moscow.
265
Liubov1 Popov a
Space-Force Construction. ip2i.
Oil on plywood, 69 x 52 cm.
Primor'e Regional Picture Gallery,
Vladivostok.
266.1
Liubov' Popova
Constructivist Composition. ip2i.
Oil on board, pj x 61. $ cm.
Private collection, England.
266.2
Aleksandr Vesnin
Abstract Composition. l<?2l.
Oil on cardboard, pj. y x 63 cm.
State Shchttsev Museum. Moscow.
267
Liubov' Popova
Space-Force Construction. 1920-21.
Oil uith marble dust on board,
112.6 x 112.7 cm.
Collection George Costakis. Germany.
268
Varvara Sfepanova
Construction, ca. 1921.
Collage on paper. 35.9 x 22.9 cm.
Collection George Costakis. Germany.
269
Liubov' Popova
Study for exhibition catalogue.
5 x 5 = 25, 1921.
Colored pencil and collage on paper,
23. 1 x 15.6 cm.
State Shchusev Museum, Moscow.
270
Varvara Stepanova
Study for poster far the second part of the
5 x 5 = 25 exhibition, 1921.
Collage and gouache on pap'":
28 x 2$ cm.
Collection Krystyna Gmurzyns'^'J-Bscher.
Cologne.
271
Varvara Stepanova
Figure, 1921.
Oil on plywood, 12$ x Jl. 5 cm.
A. M. Rodchenko and V. F. Stepanova
Archive, Moscow.
272
Varvara Stepanova
Five Figures on a White Background,
1920.
Oil on canvas, 79. 5 x 97. 5 cm.
A. M. Rodchenko and V. F. Stepanova
Archive. Moscow.
jfi>L.
273
Aleksandra Ekster
Composition, ca. 1921.
Gouache on paper, 42 x 39 cm.
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo,
New York. Edmund Hayes and
Charles W. Goodyear Funds, 1974.
274
Aleksandra Ekster
Construction, 1922-2}.
Oil on canvas, 89. 8x 89.2 cm.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
The Riklts Collection of McCrory
Corporation (fractional gift), 198}.
275
Aleksandra Ekster
Color Construction, 1922.
Oil on canvas, 62 x 66 cm.
Dagestan Museum of the Arts,
Makhachkala.
276
Aleksandra Ekster
Construction of Color Planes, 1921.
Oil on canvas, 89 x 89 cm.
State Radishchev Art Museum, Saratov.
277
Aleksandra Ekster
Construction of Lines, 192}.
Gouache and watercolor on paper,
56 x $6 cm.
Private collection.
Courtesy Rachel Adler Gallery.
278
Konstantin Medunetskii
Color Construction, Ip20.
Oil on canvas. 8j. 6 x 61.5 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
279
Konstantin Medunetskii
Color Construction No. 9, 1920-21.
Oil on board, 60. $ x 57. J cm.
Stale Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
280
Konstantin Medunetskii
Color Construction No. 7. 1921.
Oil on canvas, jl x 62 cm.
State Lunacharskii Museum of
Fine Arts, Krasnodar.
281.1
Konstantin Medunetskii
Spatial Construction. 1921.
reconstruction 1992 by Michael Duchting.
Steel and wood. 61 x 40 x ij cm.
Collection Dieter Zaha, Kassel.
281.2 .
Konstantin Medunetskii
Spatial Construction, 1921,
reconstruction 1992 by Michael Duchting.
Steel and wood, 84 x 44 x 59 cm.
Collection Dieter Zaha. Kassel.
282
Konstantin Medunetskii
Spatial Construction, ipip-20.
Tin, brass, steel, and painted iron on
painted metal base, 46 cm high.
Yale University Art Gallery.
Gift Societe Anonyme.
283
Vladimir Stenberg
Color Construction No. 12,
1920-21.
Mixed media on canvas, 52 x 45 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
285
Vladimir Stenberg
Color Construction No. 10.
1920-21.
Mixed media on canvas. 52 x 4$ cm.
State Tret iakov Gallery. Moscow.
284
Vladimir Stenberg
Color Construction No. 13, ipip-20.
Mixed media on canvas, 45 x $2 cm.
State Tret 'iakov Gallery, Moscow.
286
Vladimir Sternberg
Color Construction No. 4. Ip20.
Oil on canvas, J$ x 38. J cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
287
Georgii Stenberg
Non-Objeccive Composition, 1920.
Watercolor, india ink, and whiting on
paper, 30. 4 x 18.5 cm.
State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.
288
Georgii Stenberg
Color Construction, ipip.
Oil and metallic paint on cardboard,
27 x 1 J cm.
Albrtght-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo,
New York. George B. and Jenny R.
Mathews Fund, ip j6.
289
Georgii Stenberg
Color Construction of Materials
No. 7, 1920.
Metal, sand, bluing, glass, and oil on
board. 46 x 26 cm.
State Tret 'takov Gallery, Moscow.
290
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Spatial Construction No. 5. 1918,
reconstruction.
Painted aluminum, 47. $ x 37. $ x 21 cm.
Wilhelm Hack Museum. Ludwigshafen.
291
Vladimir Stenberg
Spatial Construction KPS 29, ip2i,
reconstruction 1977.
Brass tubes, steel rods, hardwood painted
with black lacquer, and steel wires,
27$ x 60 x 52 cm, including base.
Collection Galerie Hoffmann, Friedberg,
Dokumentation konstruktive Kunst.
292
Vladimir Stenberg
Spatial Construction KPS 42 N IV.
ip2i, reconstruction 197).
Aluminum, 264 x jo x i}0 cm.
Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne.
293
Georgii Stenberg
Spatial Construction KPS si N XI.
1021, reconstruction 197}.
Browned and chromium-plated iron,
glass, and wood. 220 x 100 x 61 cm.
Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne.
294
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Oval Hanging Spatial Construction
No. 12, 1921, reconstruction by
Aleksandr Lavrent'ev, 1970.
Varnished plywood, $4 x 80 x 50 cm.
A. M. Rodchenko and V. F. Stepanova
Archive, Moscow.
295
Katarzyna Kobro
Suprematist Construction
(Suspended), 1921.
Steel, 4j x 28 cm.
Private collection.
296
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Hanging Spatial Construction,
reconstruction 1982.
Aluminum, 59 x 58 x $9 cm.
Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne.
1921,
297
Katarzyna Kobro
Abstract Sculpture I, 1924.
Glass, metal, and wood,
72 x 17.5 x 1$. $ cm.
Muzeum Sztuki. Lodz.
298
Antoine Pevsner
Composition, 1917—18.
Oil on canvas, 80 x $2 cm.
Muse'e national a" art moderne.
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Gift Mrs. Pevsner. 1964.
299
Antoine Pevsner
Still Life: Absinthe. 1922-23.
Oil on canvas, J$. 5 x 49 cm.
State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.
300
Naum Gabo
Constructed Head No. 2, 1916.
Steel, 4$ x 40. 5 x 40.5 cm.
Collection Nina Williams, England.
301
Naum Gabo
Maquette for Constructed Torso,
191/-18, reassembled 1985.
Cardboard, IIJ cm high.
Berlinische Galerie, Museum fur moderne
Kunst, Photographie und Architektur,
Berlin.
302
Antoine Pevsner
Gray Tone, ip20.
Oil on canvas, 62 x 49 cm.
Galme Alice Pauli, Lausanne.
303
Naum Gabo
Design for a Construction. igi8.
Pencil on paper, 40.5 x 2J.$ cm.
Collection Nina Williams. England.
304
Naum Gabo
Study tor an Outdoor Construction.
1917.
Penal on paper, 2} x 2 J. 5 cm.
Galerie de France, Paris.
305
Naum Gabo
Study tor a Tower. 1917,
Pencil on paper, 40. 3 x 28.5 cm.
Berlinische Galerie, Museum fur nwderne
Kunst, Photographie und A rchitektur,
Berlin.
306
Naum Gabo
Study for a Square in Moscow, ipip.
Pencil on paper, 42 x Jj cm.
Collection Thomas P. Whitney.
307
Naum Gabo
Column, ca. Ip2^, reconstruction ipj/ by
the artist.
Perspex, wood, metal, and glass,
10$. 5 x 75. 6 x j 5. 6 cm.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York.
308
Gustav Klutsis
Study for poster. Electrification of the
Entire Country. 1920.
Ink. gouache, and collage on paper.
46. 3 x 2j.$cm.
Collection Merrill C. Berman.
309
Gustav Klutsis
Dynamic City. ipip.
Gouache, foil, photomontage, collage, and
pencil on paper, }j. $x 25.8 cm.
State Art Museum of Latvia. Riga.
310
Gustav Klutsis
Dynamic City. iplp.
Oil with sand and concrete on board.
87 x 64.$ cm.
Collection George Costakis. Germany.
311
Gustav Klutsis
Construction, 1921.
India ink, gouache, pencil, and sealing
wax on paper. 66. 6 x 41. 4 cm.
State Art Museum of Latvia, Riga.
312
Gustav Klutsis
Construction, ip2i.
Penal and ink on paper. 52. ix 43.5 cm.
State Art Museum of Latvia, Riga.
313
Gustav Klutsis
Construction, ip2l.
Gouache, ink, silverbronze, and sealing
wax on paper, 81. 7 x 66.$ cm.
State Art Museum of Latvia, Riga.
314
Elena Afanas'eva
Color and Space , 1924-25.
Oil on canvas, 29. 2x3? cm.
Barry Friedman Ltd. . New York.
315
Elena Afanas'eva
Color Composition, 1924-25
Oil on canvas, }$ x 33. 3 cm.
Barry Friedman Ltd. , New York.
316 ,
Gustav Klutsis
Chromatic Table, from Color
i Discipline Textbook for Vkhutemas
| Students, IP24-30.
Collage and India ink on paper,
$0.8 x 20.8 cm.
I State Tret 'takov Gallery. Moscow.
317
Mikhail Matiushin
Table from Guide to Color: Rules ot
the Fluctuations of Color
Combinations. I9}2.
Gouache on cardboard. 12. 5 x 143 cm.
Collection A. V. Povelikhina.
St. Petersburg.
318
Mikhail Matiushin
Table from Guide to Color: Rules of
the Fluctuations of Color
Combinations, 1932.
Gouache on cardboard. 12. 5 x 143. 5 cm.
Collection A. V. Povelikhina.
St. Petersburg.
A Brief History of
Obmokhu
Aleksandra Shatskikh
Studies of early Soviet art invariably devote a great deal of
attention to the Society of Young Artists, or Obmokhu. The
activity of its members proved an enabling factor in the
emergence of Constructivism in the five years following the
October Revolution, and the careers of many prominent artists
traced their beginnings to Obmokhu. Yet, as scholars have
noted, the history of Obmokhu has not been entirely clear;
numerous questions have remained unanswered.
While researching the history of the First Free State Art
Workshops, I have brought to light a number of circumstances
and factual details which make it possible to strip away
persistent inaccuracies in and distortions of the history of
Obmokhu and to establish a more precise chronology and
authentic account of the group's activity.
Both Soviet and Western scholars have relied above all on
V. M. Lobanov's Kbt/dozhestvennye gruppirovki za poslednie 25 let
(Artists' Groups over the Last Twenty-Five Years), published by
AKhR (the Association of Artists of the Revolution) in 1930,
for their information on Obmokhu. For Soviet art historians,
Lobanov's slender volume was for many decades nearly the only
comprehensive work treating the multiple facets of artistic life
in the immediate postrevolutionary years. Because Lobanov was
a participant in and witness to the events he described,
subsequent generations attributed to his book all the merits of
a primary source; Lobanov's information, because it was
firsthand, seemed authoritative and trustworthy. As a result, no
critical judgment was brought to bear on the book: Lobanov's
facts were neither doubted nor checked, and his mistakes and
inaccuracies were reproduced in the work of one writer after
another — as they are even today. Yet one needn't look far to
determine that the book does, indeed, contain errors of fact.
Thus, for example, Lobanov insists — and more than once —
that the Twenty-First State Exhibition, which opened in March
1921, was the last exhibition organized by I20 Narkompros (the
Department of Fine Arts of the People's Commissariat of
Enlightenment).' The truth, however, is that both the Twenty-
Second State Exhibition (on which more below) and the
Twenty-Third (the hardly obscure exhibition of Marc Chagall's
murals for the State Jewish Kamernyi Theater in Moscow) were
also organized by Izo Narkompros.2
Lobanov was the official historian of and apologist for
AKhR, and his book is a product of its times: it is
undisguisedly tendentious, a polemic bent on repudiation of
Izo Narkompros. It was Lobanov's aim to demonstrate, on the
one hand, the bankruptcy of Izo Narkompros 's pluralistic
policy and, on the other, the weakness and unviability of
various "Formalist" tendencies and movements in
postrevolutionary art. Singling out Obmokhu — whose chief
significance lay, according to Lobanov, "not in the formulation
or realization of this or that artistic slogan so much as in its
being a pioneer in the creation of new artists' groupings based,
unlike the eclectic Narkompros exhibitions, on a selection of
artists united by a shared principle"' — and juxtaposing it to
other artists' associations served Lobanov's strategy. AKhR
aspired to power, and its ideologues saw a concentrated "strike
force" of artists as the chief means of attaining it. Lobanov
chose Obmokhu, so it appears, in order to demonstrate the
efficacy of such a ploy. The "postscripts," inaccuracies, and
deliberate suppression of certain facts of Obmokhu's history in
Lobanov's book were dictated by this biased purpose.
In the summer of 1919, at the moment of highest tension in
the Civil War, a general mobilization into the Red Army was
announced, and many students of the former Stroganov School
in Moscow, who had just finished their first year at the new
First Free State Art Workshops, were sent to the front. One of
those called up was Georgii Shchetinin, who had been among
the most active reformers of artistic education "from below"; he
257
had done immense organizational work at the school over a
number of years.4 At his departure, Shchetinin made a close
friend pledge both to carry on his work at the First Free State
Art Workshops and to write him regularly and in detail about
everything that happened there. Shchetinin's friend was
Georgii Echeistov, a student of Vladimir Favorskii's and later
a well-known graphic artist, and he kept his promise to
Shchetinin. Both young men were acutely aware that history
was being made around them and through them, and they
carefully preserved their notes, letters, and other papers. The
1919-21 correspondence between Echeistov and Shchetinin is
invaluable, for it records events as they occurred and is marred
by none of the distortions that afflict later reminiscences and
memoirs.'
In a brief letter of September 15, 1919, Echeistov told
Shchetinin, among other things: "A group 'without a
supervisor' has formed out of Grigor'ev's workshop, and Fm in
it. I'll work under G. Iakulov in a special workshop and learn
about theater, and one can earn money with him." These lines
require some elucidation: a reform introduced in the first
months of the Soviet state had led to the creation of the
experimental Svomas (Free Workshops), where a master-and-
apprentice system, modeled on the Utopian ideal of the
Renaissance studio, was the basis of art education. The new
professional schools in both Moscow and Petrograd were
composed of individual workshops, in which classes were
conducted by artists elected supervisors by the students. At the
First Free State Art Workshops, created from the former
Srroganov School, there were not only individual but special
workshops, in which students of different classes could study;
special workshops in stage and costume design were run by
fig. 1
The "workshop without a supervisor, " First State Free Art Workshops,
Moscow, ip20. From left, seated: Zharova, Kozlova, and Svetlov;
standing: Prusakov, unidentified, Mens hut in, Zhukov, Aleksandrov,
I. Mistriuk, and Naumov.
258
fig. 2
Lentulov's workshop. First State Free Art Workshops, Moscow, 1920.
Standing, third from right, Komardenkov; center, Lentulov.
259
Aristarkh Lentulov, Fedor Fedorovskii, and Georgii Iakulov.
Iakulov was highly regarded by the students, participated in
many of their undertakings, and helped them to endure the
hardships of those years. He put his workshop on an
"economic" footing from its very first months: he paid wages
for work, obtained commissions for his students, and so on.6
A portion of the students at the First Free State Art
Workshops, in particular those who at the time of the
Revolution had been in the Stroganov School's senior classes,
were entitled to study exclusively in the special workshops.7
According to a report written by Shchetinin, there were
eighteen workshops in all at the First Free State Art
Workshops (twelve in painting, three in sculpture, and three in
architecture).8 One of the painting workshops was headed by
Boris Grigor'ev, who lived in Petrograd and made infrequent
visits to Moscow (at the end of 1919, he and his family would
leave Russia for good). At the beginning of the 1919-20
academic year, the students in Grigor'ev 's workshop chose, for
a number of reasons, to reject their teacher elected the year
before and to form a group "without a supervisor," as was
permitted under the provisional bylaws of the Free Workshops.
In a draft autobiography, Echeistov later indicated: "At about
this time my artistic credo begin to take shape under the
influence of the Futurists (artists, painters, and poets). I didn't
care for any of the Russian artists, I liked the French in
Shchukin's gallery. So I joined up with Prusakov and Naumov,
who had organized a workshop without a supervisor."
Aleksandr Naumov, a brilliantly gifted artist who died at
an early age, and Nikolai Prusakov, who would become well
known as a poster artist and designer, were among the school's
most talented students, and had already received their basic
professional training at the old Stroganov School. In 1919—20,
Echeistov, Naumov, and Prusakov were joined in the
"workshop without a supervisor" by Grigorii Aleksandrov,
S. I. Egorov, Nikolai Glushkov, Klavdiia Kozlova, Nikolai
Menshutin, Sergei Svetlov, Lidiia Zharova (who married
Naumov in 1920), and Petr Zhukov (fig. no. 1). According to
the testimony of Zharova-Naumova, Sergei Kostin and Mikhail
Sapegin, among others, were frequent visitors to the workshop,
where life drawing was well taught.9 Like Echeistov, certain of
the students in the "workshop without a supervisor" —
Aleksandrov, Menshutin, Sapegin, Svetlov, and Zhukov—
continued to study in Iakulov 's stage-design workshop.
The "workshop without a supervisor" remained in existence
until the spring of 1920. A number of the students, particularly
those who were already clear about where their artistic futures
lay and those who were employed filling commissions,
considered their educations at an end and were given
certificates attesting to their having completed a course of
higher education. In the Free Workshops, and initially at
Vkhutemas (the Higher Artistic-Technical Workshops), there
were no strict prerequisites for graduation — a student
presented his work to the Council of Professors, and if the
Council judged the work to be mature, the young artist was
given a certificate of completion. (It is for this reason that the
graduation dates of the Free Workshops' and Vkhutemas 's first
graduates vary so widely.'0)
Over three days at the end of September 1919, Echeistov
wrote a long letter (dated September 27-29) to Shchetinin,
giving him the latest news:
l'locfcOFYw.IlAfT
(POKAl/CTBfHM 11)
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OTKrUTWEEUCTAEM
OtimCTSArWOAUJ
KUOXHMKK.
omo/y
V^CTfvior: A.Hiynog.Ctm/lO'i, H. JECRHioerK mm,C.Koiimm.
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fig. 3
Poster for Obmokhu exhibition, Moscow, May 2-16, 1920.
Collection N. D. Lobanov-Rostovsky.
What can I write "about art in Moscow' ' ? It's tight. I'm counting
on our workshops. As soon as I'm free {of his duties as secretary of the
students' executive committee), what a journal I'll start (unless I get
lazy). Still, my being secretary pays off — I've been in the thick of
things. A society of young artists, Obmolkhud, is being organized. I
wrote the bylaws. (I emended them today, they need reworking and
260
polishing.) Sapegin, Naumov, Prusakov. Komardenkov, Kostin, and
I — and, I can't remember, Stepanov and Denisovskii. too, I think —
are the directors. We're organizing it to combat the artists in authority
who exploit young talents (the Kostin-Grigor'ev incident and others)."
Echeistov's letter unambiguously attests that Obmolkhud,
as Obmokhu was first called, began forming only in the
autumn of 1919; the group could not, therefore, have held an
exhibition in the spring of 1919, as Lobanov asserts. It should
be noted that the young artists did not treat the organization
of their society lightly but erected it on a carefully laid
foundation; the group had bylaws,'2 elected directors (Nikolai
Denisovskii, endowed with exceptional organizational skills,
later became its president), and a seal.
All of the artists listed by Echeistov — with the exception of
Sapegin, Aleksei Stepanov, and Echeistov himself — have been
recognized by scholars as members of Obmokhu. The
participation of both Sapegin — a student of Iakulov's and a
future stage designer — and Stepanov — also a student of
Iakulov's, who later worked at the State Jewish Kamernyi
Theater — in the early stages of the organization of Obmokhu
appears quite probable. As for Echeistov, a fire in the
"workshop without a supervisor" in late 1919— early 1920 led
him into a deep depression, and he stopped working. "The fire
in our workshop," Echeistov wrote in his autobiography,
"destroyed an enormous number of drawings completed over
this time. It was a tremendous loss; I did almost nothing for
the whole next year.""
With what exhibition of 1919 has the first Obmokhu
exhibition been confused? At the end of the 1918— 19 academic
year at the First Free State Art Workshops, the new art school's
first full year of operation, a showcase exhibition was held at
the school's quarters at 11 Rozhdestvenka. At the exhibition, on
view in June 1919, the works of students and teachers were
displayed together, by workshop (the very organizing
principle, that is, that Lobanov claims was Obmokhu's
innovation). A large informative notice in the newspaper
Iskusstvo (Art) is unambiguous on this point:
EXHIBITION OF WORKS OF THE STATE FREE ART WORKSHOPS
The first exhibition of more than one thousand works from
the state industrial workshops closed on July 1st. The exhibition
was divided up according to individual and decorative-and-production
workshops. The workshops of the artists F. Fedorovskii, G. lakulov,
A. Lentulov, P. Konchalovskii, A. Morgunov. V. Tatlin,
A. Grishchenko, B. Grigor'ev, Ul'ianov, the sculptor Vatagin, and
others were represented. '"
The author of the notice — in all likelihood Shchetinin,
who published an extensive report on the First Free State Art
Workshops' first year in the next issue of Art — emphasizes
that "the exhibition itself was clearly organized as a decorative
and production one. Still, the principle of revolutionizing
everyday life is manifestly shared by the workshops of the
artists G. B. lakulov (very successful signboards for factories
and public buildings), F. F. Fedorovskii (the maquettes for
folk-dance performances were of interest), and, in part,
A. V. Lentulov (stage-design maquettes) and by the students
working out new types of posters, books, street and train
decorations, and so forth." Lobanov 's list of the kinds of work
exhibited in what he calls the first Obmokhu exhibition, in the
spring of 1919, matches the list in the notice.
The displaying of works by students and teachers as a single
work of the entire workshop at the First State Free Art
Workshops show, mistaken for the first Obmokhu exhibition,
has caused lakulov and Lentulov to be included among
Ofettrao Mo»oflH:i
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fig- 4
Invoice from Obmokhu to Narkompros. October 28, ip20. The
document is stamped with two Obmokhu seals designed by
Vladimir Stenberg.
Central State Archive of Russia, Moscow.
261
Obmokhu's members. Yet, as will become clear below, Iakulov
and Lentulov never participated in Obmokhu's exhibitions and
cannot be counted as members of the group (as they are in
numerous descriptions of Obmokhu and in articles and
monographs on their work).
The "decorative and production" principle singled out in
the description of the exhibited works — a principle that was to
enable the "revolutionizing of everyday life" — is especially
noteworthy. The introduction of "art into life" — the chief
slogan of the future Productivists and Constructivists — was
naturally bound to play a defining role in the educational
program of the First Free State Art Workshops. But the
evolution and instilling of new forms followed a turbulent,
contentious course; Echeistov wrote in the September 27—29,
1919, letter cited above: "Tatlin is leaving for Petrograd for
good, with tears in his eyes because he wasn't understood at the
Stroganov; and he won't have anything to do with the Second
Workshops [the Second State Free Art Workshops, created
from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and
Architecture], doesn't acknowledge them. He got a
commission and is going. "', Open conflicts between the
"purists" and Productivists would soon rattle artistic life, and
the departure of the wounded Tatlin anticipates, as it were, the
schism inside Inkhuk (the Institute of Artistic Culture) —
though at Inkhuk, it would be the easel painters who would
depart, leaving the field to the Productivists.
The principle of exhibiting by workshop adhered to at the
1919 showcase exhibition did shape the true first Obmokhu
exhibition, which opened in May 1920 at the First Free State
Art Workshops at 11 Rozhdestvenka. The poster announcing
the exhibition (fig. no. 3) read:
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fig- 5
Invitation card to Obmokhu exhibition, Moscow, May -June 1921.
First State Free Art Workshops
(11 Rozhdestvenka)
Sunday, May 2nd at ip.m. Opening of the Obmokhu (Society of
Young Painters) exhibition.
Participants: A. Naumov, S. Svetlov, N. Denisovskii, S. Kostin,
V. Stenberg, G. Stenberg, K. Medunetskii, V. Komardenkov,
A. Perekatov, A. Zamoshkin, Eremichev, D. lakovlev.
Opening remarks will be delivered by A. V. Lunacharskii.
Speakers: Comrades L. B. Kamenev,
0. D. Kameneva,
D. P. Shterenberg,
0. M. Brik,
G. B. Iakulov.
Admission on opening day is by invitation, and unrestricted on other
days.
The exhibition will be open May 2-16, from 1-6 p.m.
The "workshop without a supervisor" and the "Iakulovists"
and "Lentulovists" (not listed alphabetically but grouped by
workshop on the poster) were represented at the exhibition. For
a number of the students — including Georgii and Vladimir
Stenberg, Vasilii Komardenkov, Aleksandr Zamoshkin, and
Prusakov — the exhibition marked the occasion of their
graduation. Sketches for festive decorations of streets and
buildings and for the decoration of trains and ships, posters,
designs for stage sets and costumes, and experimental works
were on display.
The usefulness of such design work for various educational
and propaganda undertakings of the Soviet state was obvious,
and the leaders of Narkompros, headed by Anatolii
Lunacharskii, decided to create an agit-production workshop
from Obmokhu. Space for the workshop was found in the
262
former Faberge shop at 4 Kuznetskii most (on the corner of
Neglinnaia Street), and funds for outfitting it were approved
by Narkompros in September 1920. '6
Obmokhu functioned not only as an association of like-
minded artists but, above all, as a Productivist artel, filling
commissions and serving the artistic needs of the new society
and the new state. Surviving documents give some idea of
Obmokhu's activities in 1920-21: Narkompros 's Financial
Department paid out specific sums "for the execution of a
poster supporting the Decree on the Abolition of Illiteracy,"
"for the execution of four stamps for the All-Russian Special
Commission to Abolish Illiteracy," for stencils, ornaments,
slogan boards, and so on. A commission for "thirty-six
monumental panels," to be made from sheets of iron roofing,
was received and filled (fig. no. 4). The accounts and financial
documents were signed by both Denisovskii, Obmokhu's
president, and by Vladimir Stenberg, who signed himself as
"chief of production" (and sometimes as president).'7
This artel work provided the members of Obmokhu with
their livelihood. Orders, which came chiefly from the
departments and commissions of Narkompros, were filled
collectively, hence the credit for them was also collective — the
artel's "artistic production" was signed only "Obmokhu."
Payment was likewise shared equally among all members who
had helped fill a commission — and these included artists who
never displayed their work at Obmokhu's exhibitions.'8
It was the second Obmokhu exhibition, known in the
scholarly literature as the third, that ensured the group's fame.
That it was indeed the second rather than the third is reflected
in the invitation card to the exhibition (fig. no. 5), whose
announcement of Obmokhu's Vtoraia vesenniaia vystavka (Second
Spring Exhibition) has been a source of bewilderment to scholars
trusting Lobanov's enumeration." The exhibition poster
prepared by Komardenkov (fig. no. 6) states explicitly,
moreover, that the exhibition was organized by Narkompros; it
was officially the Twenty-Second Exhibition of the Central
Section of Izo Narkompros. Lobanov skipped over this fact,
which didn't jibe with his scheme of antithetical "eclectic
Narkompros exhibitions" and exhibitions of "artists united by
a shared principle." The exhibitors listed on the invitation card
were, with the exception of Karl Ioganson and Aleksandr
Rodchenko, mechanically transcribed by Lobanov onto his list
of the "founders of Obmokhu."20
The second Obmokhu exhibition opened in Moscow on
May 22, 1921, at 11 Bol'shaia Dmitrovka, the former Mikhailova
Salon. Though Rodchenko and Ioganson participated in the
exhibition, their works, along with those of Konstantin
Medunetskii and Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, were shown
in a separate hall — constituting, as it were, an exhibition
within the exhibition, as the famous installation photographs
documenting the displays of only Rodchenko's "faction,"
confirm. Those months were a period of turmoil for the
proponents of production art, and in that context the second
Obmokhu exhibition was used as a forum for asserting the new
forms championed by the First Working Group of
Constructivists of Inkhuk, a group which had formed in the
spring of 1921 and almost all of whose members (Aleksei Gan
and Varvara Stepanova were the exceptions) participated in the
second Obmokhu exhibition. So voluminous is the literature,
generously sprinkled with documentary material, that has been
devoted to the emergence and development of Constructivism
in Russian art that there is no need to dwell here on the
significance of the second Obmokhu exhibition. It ought
rather to be emphasized that, thanks to this exhibition, the
character of Obmokhu has forevermore been painted, so to
speak, in Constructivist colors. For both contemporaries and
succeeding generations, Obmokhu has been indissolubly
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263
linked with the early stage of Constructivism, overshadowing
and supplanting other aspects of Obmokhu's collective
endeavor. The discussions which took place at Inkhuk in late
1921 solidified Obmokhu's status as a "society of
Constructivists."
The "color constructions," "constructions of spatial
structures," and "spatial constructions" shown at the second
Obmokhu exhibition were the fruit of "laboratory
Constructivism," of the theoretical and practical formulations
worked out by the First Working Group of Constructivists, to
which the five exhibitors with Obmokhu — Ioganson,
Rodchenko, Medunetskii, and Georgii and Vladimir
Stenberg — belonged from the first months of Inkhuk's
existence. The "constructions of spatial structures" exhibited
by the Stenbergs also had a direct connection with the program
of study and student assignments in the special laboratory of
Vkhutemas's Architecture Faculty which Vladimir Stenberg —
senior assistant in the laboratory — had developed in close
collaboration with the laboratory head, Anton Lavinskii.21
The conjunction of "laboratory" works of early
Constructivism, on the one hand, and, on the other, distinctly
utilitarian posters promoting the measures of the All-Russian
Special Commission to Abolish Illiteracy made for the diversity
and heterogeneity of both the second Obmokhu exhibition and
the production of Obmokhu as a whole. Further self-definition
by the participants in Obmokhu's exhibitions and
crystallization of their artistic aspirations could lead only to
splintering and the collapse of the society. The Stenbergs and
Medunetskii formed a group of their own, forthrightly calling
themselves Konstruktivisty (the Constructivists); their
exhibition opened in January 1922.
In the autumn of 1922, the members of Obmokhu showed
their work at the Erste russiscbe Kunstausstellung {First Russian
Art Exhibition, Berlin); Obmokhu's president, Denisovskii, had
expended great effort on collecting and organizing work for the
exhibition.22 It is impossible, however, to label this Obmokhu's
last collaborative venture, for each of Obmokhu's members
showed his own individual works. In contrast to, say, the
"Vitebsk school" — which was set off both at the exhibition and
in the exhibition catalogue — Obmokhu did not exhibit as such
in Berlin; by the time of the Berlin exhibition, Obmokhu no
longer existed.
"The members of Obmokhu," Lobanov writes, "organized
their fourth exhibition in conjunction with the Congress of the
Comintern, showing their current Productivist works."2'
Nineteen twenty-three is the year assigned to this putative
exhibition in the first volume oiVystavki sovetskogo
izobrazitel'nogo iskusstva {Exhibitions of Soviet Fine Art), a
reference work cited in all subsequent publications.24 There
was, however, no Congress of the Comintern in 1923;
congresses were held in 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1924, 1928, and
1935. An extensive program of cultural events did coincide with
the Third Congress of the Comintern, held in Moscow in
June-July 1921. The Hotel Kontinental1, where the congress
delegates were housed, was the site of an exhibition that
included works by Kazimir Malevich, Tatlin, Il'ia Mashkov,
and others; a fragment of this exhibition is visible in a
photograph taken of a group of delegates.2' Lobanov was surely
describing this 1921 exhibition, inasmuch as in November 1922
all events in honor of the Fourth Congress of the Comintern
were held in Petrograd; and in 1923, as has already been noted,
there was no congress at all. It is highly unlikely that
Obmokhu mounted two different exhibitions in June 1921; the
second Obmokhu exhibition on Bol'shaia Dmitrovka, which
opened at the end of May and was, consequently, on view in
June, was Obmokhu's response to the Congress of the
Comintern. A number of works by Obmokhu apparently were
shown at the Hotel Kontinental1 exhibition (information on
this exhibition is extremely hard to come by), but one would
be hard pressed to call it the fourth Obmokhu exhibition.
The catalogue of the Vtoraia vystavka kinoplakata {Second
Exhibition of Film Posters), held in Moscow in February 1926, is
the last place in which the name Obmokhu appears to denote
the affiliation of one or another artist. It is true that only
Naumov, Prusakov, and Grigorii Borisov (Prusakov's
collaborator on many film posters) are listed here as members
of Obmokhu. Neither the Stenbergs nor Medunetskii nor
Rodchenko, all of whom also participated in the exhibition, are
cited as such (which is only natural in the case of Rodchenko:
like Ioganson, he was never identified anywhere as a "member
of Obmokhu"). This forces one to assume that, for the former
members of the First Working Group of Constructivists, the
alliance with Obmokhu was a brief episode; they did not in the
mid-i920s include themselves among its active members.
These facts about the history of Obmokhu, then, are clear.
The association initially called Obmolkhud began forming in
the autumn of 1919 at the First Free State Art Workshops, the
former Stroganov School. Its initiators were students in the
"workshop without a supervisor" (Aleksandrov, Echeistov,
Egorov, Glushkov, Kozlova, Menshutin, Naumov, Prusakov,
Svetlov, Zharova, and Zhukov), joined by the "Iakulovists"
(Denisovskii, Kostin, Medunetskii, and Georgii and Vladimir
Stenberg) and the "Lentulovists" (Mikhail Eremichev, Iakovlev,
Komardenkov, Perekatov, and Zamoshkin). A portion of the
first group (Aleksandrov, Echeistov, Egorov, Menshutin,
Svetlov, and Zhukov) were also students of Iakulov's.
Obmokhu organized two exhibitions. The first Obmokhu
exhibition was held May 2—16, 1920, at the First Free State Art
Workshops at 11 Rozhdestvenka, the second (the Twenty-
Second Exhibition of the Central Section of Izo Narkompros)
in May-June 1921 at the former Mikhailova Salon at 11
Bol'shaia Dmitrovka. It is possible that Obmokhu participated
in a June 1921 exhibition, at the Hotel Kontinental1 on
Teatral'naia Square, that coincided with the Third Congress of
the Comintern. Those who participated in the two Obmokhu
exhibitions were Denisovskii, Eremichev, Iakovlev, Ioganson,
Komardenkov, Kostin, Medunetskii, Naumov, Perekatov,
Prusakov, Rodchenko, Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, Svetlov,
and Zamoshkin. The activity of Obmokhu reached its peak in
the 1920-21 season, after which it fell off; in 1922, Obmokhu
ceased to function.
Following Obmokhu's dissolution, three of the participants
in its exhibitions — Medunetskii and Georgii and Vladimir
Stenberg — formed the Constructivists group in 1922, while in
1925 Denisovskii and Kostin joined Ost (the Society of Easel
Painters). Denisovskii and Kostin, along with Svetlov, also
participated in joint exhibitions with Iakulov, which were
designated "exhibitions of Iakulov and his workshop."2'
— Translated, from the Russian, by Jane Bobko
264
Notes
i. V. M. Lobanov, Khudozhestvennye gruppirovki za poslednie 25 let
(Moscow: Obshchestvo AKhR, 1930), pp. 87, 90. Lobanov was
taken "at his word" by the compilers of Vystavki sovetskogo
izobrazitel'nogo iskusstva, where the Twenty-First State
Exhibition is likewise labeled Izo Narkompros's "last." Vystavki
sovetskogo izobrazitel'nogo iskusstva. Spravocbnik (Moscow:
Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1965), vol. I, p. 74.
2. The invitation card reads: "June 1921. Twenty-Third
Exhibition of the Central Section of Izo Narkompros. Murals
by the artist Marc Chagall ... In the hall of the State Jewish
Kamernyi Theater (12 Bol'shoi Chernyshevskii)."
3. Lobanov, Khudozhestvennye gruppirovki, p. 105.
4. On Shchetinin's life and work, see A. S. Shatskikh,
'"Prorubaia okno v chelovecheskoe miroponimanie . . .' Zhizn'
G. B. Shchetinina (1891— 1921)," in Panorama iskusstv 8 (Moscow.
Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1985), pp. 255-74.
5. Echeistov's letters and autobiography cited below are in a
private archive, Moscow.
6. Nikolai Musatov, conversation with author, October 1985.
Musatov, born in 1895, was a student of Iakulov's in the First
Free State Art Workshops.
7. Thus Denisovskii and Musatov worked only in Iakulov's
special workshop, Zamoshkin and Komardenkov only in
Lentulov's, and so on.
8. G[eorgii] Shch[etinin], "I-yi god raboty gosudarstvennykh
khudozhestvennykh masterskikh," Iskusstvo 7 (August 2, 1919),
PP- 4-5-
9. Lidiia Zharova-Naumova, conversation with author,
September 1983.
10. Thus Denisovskii gave 1919 as the year of his graduation,
Komardenkov 1919 or 1920, and the Stenbergs 1920. As for the
students in the "workshop without a supervisor," Aleksandrov,
for example, graduated from Vkhutemas in 1924, Zhukov in
1920, Menshutin in 1922, Prusakov in 1920, and Svetlov in
1924. Manuscript Division, State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow,
f.91.
11. He was referring, according to Zharova-Naumova, to
Grigor'ev's "appropriation" of the conception behind Kostin's
stage-design work. A stage designer, painter, and graphic
artist, Kostin — the nephew of N. N. Sapunov — later created
many sets for the Bol'shoi Theater. Lidiia Zharova-Naumova,
conversation with author, September 1983.
12. The bylaws Echeistov mentions evidently resembled to
some degree those of Mastarchuv. Mastarchuv was created by
Shchetinin and Echeistov in January 1919. See Shatskikh,
'"Prorubaia okno v chelovecheskoe miroponimanie . . .,'"
pp. 264-65.
13. A photograph of Zharova-Naumova taken in the burned-
out workshop is reproduced in V. Dokuchaeva, Lidiia Naumova
(Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1984), p. 8.
14. "Vystavka rabot pervykh gosudarstvennykh svobodnykh
khudozhestvennykh masterskikh," Iskusstvo 6 (July 8, 1919),
p. 2.
15. Echeistov's letter makes it possible to be still more exact
about the date of Tallin's departure from the Moscow Svomas
and indicates one reason for it. The work commissioned from
Tatlin was a monument in honor of the anniversary of the
October Revolution; as work on the monument progressed, it
became the model for the Pamiatnik Ill-emu Internatsionalu
{Monument to the Third International).
16. "Agitatsionno-proizvodstvennaia masterskaia Vysshikh
gosudarstvennykh khudozhestvennykh masterskikh. Smeta,"
Central State Archive of Russia, Moscow, f. 2306, op. 31,
d. 617,1. 53.
17. Quoted from documents in the Central State Archive of
Russia, Moscow, f. 2306, op. 31, ed. khr. 614, 1. 83, 84, 98.
18. Komardenkov 's memoirs, published in abbreviated form as
Dni minuvshie (Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1972) are
available in a fuller variant in the Central State Archive for
Literature and Art, Moscow, f. 1337, op. 3, ed. khr. 49. Written
late in Komardenkov 's life, these memoirs contain many
inaccuracies and distortions, making it impossible to rely on
them to establish a consistent history of Obmokhu. Many
particulars recalled by the artist, however, do allow one to
reconstruct the day-to-day life of Obmokhu. Komardenkov
describes in detail Obmokhu's functioning as an artistic-
production artel.
19. Christina Lodder has paid particular attention to this
apparent inconsistency, but advances an unlikely proposition:
"The invitation to the 1921 show used the title Second Spring
Exhibition rather than Second Exhibition, so it is possible that
this was the group's second spring exhibition but its third
show overall. (According to Lobanov, the 1919 exhibition also
opened in the spring.) This seems the most probable
explanation." Christina Lodder, "Constructivism and
Productivism in the 1920s," in Art Into Life: Russian
Constructivism. 1914-1932. catalogue for exhibition organized by
the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, the
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the State Tret'yakov
Gallery, Moscow (New York: Rizzoli, 1990), p. 102.
20. Lobanov, Kudozhestvennye gruppirovki. p. 104.
21. Central State Archive for Literature and Art, Moscow,
f. 681, op. 2, ed. khr. 411, 1. 13.
22. V. P. Lapshin, "Pervaia vystavka russkogo iskusstva. Berlin.
1922 god. Materialy k istorii sovetsko-germanskikh
khudozhestvennykh sviazei," Sovetskoe iskusstvoznanie 1 (1982).
pp. 327-62.
23. Lobanov, Khudozhestvennye gruppirovki . p. 105.
24. "Chetvertaia vystavka Obmokhu," in Vystavki sovetskogo
izobrazitel'nogo iskusstva. p. 114. The information about the
exhibition given here relies on a single source — Lobanov.
25. Kommunisticheskii internatsional 18 (1921), p. 4708.
26. See, for example, the notice "Vystavka Iakulova," Ermitazh
12 (August 1-7, 1922), p. 14.
265
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V/'w ofObmokhu exhibition, Moscow, May-June ip2i.
266
The Transition to
Constructivism
Christina Lodder
Constructivism is advancing — the slender child of an industrial
culture.
For a long time capitalism has let it rot underground.
It has been liberated by — the Proletarian Revolution.
— Aleksei Gan (1922)
From painting to sculpture, from sculpture to construction, from
construction to technology and invention — this is my chosen path, and
will surely be the ultimate goal of every revolutionary artist.
— Karl loganson (ip22)
The rediscovery of Russian Constructivism has been a striking
phenomenon of the past decade. The movement has acquired a
heroic status for certain critics and artists of a Postmodernist
persuasion. At the same time, original works and documents
have begun to emerge from the former Soviet Union,
permitting a more detailed and complex historical
understanding of the period. This essay focuses on the initial
emergence of a Constructivist position within the Russian
avant-garde and, in particular, on the extraordinary exhibition
that marked its first public manifestation, the Obmokhu (the
Society of Young Artists) show of May 1921.
The idea of Constructivism has become a critical
commonplace, variously understood, but at the moment of its
invention it clearly carried specific implications and a real
polemical edge. The First Working Group of Constructivists,
also known as the Working Group of Constructivists, was
formed in March 1921, within Inkhuk (the Institute of Artistic
Culture) in Moscow.' The group comprised Aleksei Gan,
Varvara Stepanova, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Karl loganson,
Konstantin Medunetskii, and the brothers Georgii and
Vladimir Stenberg.2 They seem to have come together during
the fascinating theoretical discussions conducted at Inkhuk
during the previous three months, discussions which addressed
the distinction that artists were starting to make between
construction and composition as principles of artistic
organization. The self-proclaimed Constructivists were united
in their commitment to a viewpoint articulated by Rodchenko
in January 1921: "All new approaches to art arise from
technology and engineering and move toward organization and
construction," and "real construction is utilitarian necessity."'
Such a stance seemed indeed to crystallize their response to the
pressing question of how artists could contribute to the new
Communist order and celebrate the values inherent in the
Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
In their draft program of April 1, 1921, written by Gan, the
group proclaimed a new synthesis of art and industry. They
wanted to relegate their purely artistic explorations to the role
of "laboratory work," and to extend their experiments with
manipulating three-dimensional abstract forms into the real
environment by participating in the industrial manufacture of
useful objects. They called the new type of activity that they
envisaged "intellectual production," proclaiming that their
ideological foundation was "scientific communism, built on
the theory of historical materialism" and that they intended to
attain "the communistic expression of material structures" by
organizing their material according to the three principles of
tektonika (tectonics, or the socially and politically appropriate
use of industrial material), construction (the organization of
this material for a given purpose), and faktura (the conscious
handling and manipulation of it).4
The strategies they proposed included investigating the
Soviet building industry and establishing links with
committees in charge of production. These measures were to be
accompanied by a highly organized propaganda campaign of
exhibitions and publications that would include a weekly
journal, Vestnik intellektual'nogo proizvodstva {The Herald of
Intellectual Production) and a bulletin. Gan explained:
In order to put our work on show, an exhibition of Constructivist
spatial works should be staged, as testimony not only to what we are
doing today but also to what we are aiming for and the tasks that we
have set ourselves. 5
Accordingly, about two months after the formation of the
group, some of the Constructivists showed their current
practical work at the Vtoraia vesenniaia vystavka (Second Spring
Exhibition) of Obmokhu, more commonly known as the third
267
Obmokhu exhibition, which opened on May 22, 1921.6
Altogether, fourteen artists participated: Nikolai Denisovskii,
Mikhail Eremichev, Aleksandr Zamoshkin, Vasilii
Komardenkov, Sergei Kostin, Aleksandr Naumov, Aleksandr
Perekatov, Nikolai Prusakov, and Sergei Svetlov, as well as the
Constructivists Medunetskii and the Stenberg brothers — who
were members of Obmokhu — and Ioganson and Rodchenko,
who were specially invited to contribute to this one show."
The previous history of Obmokhu reveals a radical political
commitment that would also underpin Constructivism.
Although the precise chronology of the group is still somewhat
unclear, Obmokhu seems to have been set up in the autumn of
1919 by students from the "workshop without a supervisor" at
the State Free Art Workshops in Moscow." The members had
also come together through their work on various agitational
projects during 1918, particularly the decorations of Moscow's
streets for the revolutionary festivals. Medunetskii and the
Stenberg brothers, who were living together by this time, had
decorated the Post Office on Miasnitskaia (now Kirov Street)
for May Day 1918 with the help of Denisovskii.9 Subsequently,
it appears, they had worked with the other future members of
Obmokhu to decorate the Rogozhsko-Simonovskii district of
Moscow for November 1918.'0 The artists later contributed
numerous posters to the government's propaganda programs,
such as the Campaign to Abolish Illiteracy, and, according to
V. M. Lobanov, Obmokhu's first exhibition was devoted to
such agitational work, which was displayed anonymously to
emphasize the collective nature of the group's production." He
described the contents of their second exhibition as mainly
posters, with a small number of abstract works and
tsvetokonstruktsii (color constructions), presumably paintings.
Lobanov's description corresponds to A. A. Sidorov's review of
the May 1920 show, which suggests that some three-
dimensional constructions were shown; Sidorov mentions
"a statue ... by comrade Stenberg made of sheet metal,"
alongside paintings by Naumov and others in the style of Boris
Grigor'ev and Georgii Iakulov.'2 Lobanov's account identifies
Obmokhu's Second Spring Exhibition as, in fact, their third
exhibition overall, and this was confirmed by Vladimir
Stenberg many years later." He recalled that the third
Obmokhu exhibition was held "in a kind of salon-cafe on
Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street and Kuznetsky Bridge."'4
There was no catalogue for the exhibition, although the
invitation card survives. Fortunately, two installation
photographs were reproduced soon after the event: one view in
the spring of 1922 in the journal Veshch'/Gegenstand/Objet
(Object), edited by El Lissitzky and Il'ia Erenburg in Berlin
(fig. no. i),'s and the other the same year in the Hungarian
avant-garde magazine Egyseg (Unity), published by Bela Uitz in
Vienna (fig. no. 2)."' The two images show adjacent corners of a
large hall, in which constructions by Rodchenko, Ioganson, the
Stenbergs, and Medunetskii are visible, as well as abstract
paintings, some of which can now be identified as works by the
Stenberg brothers and Medunetskii. The two photographs are
devoted exclusively to the works by the First Working Group
of Constructivists and give no indication of what the other nine
artists showed. Indeed, Egyseg labeled its photograph of the
exhibition "The Constructivists at the Obmokhu Exhibition"
and included separate illustrations of work by Vladimir
Stenberg and Ioganson (fig. no. 3).'" The photograph of the
Stenberg construction was almost certainly taken at the
exhibition, as the molding on the ceiling conforms to that in
the two views of the show. Egyseg also printed translations of
the program of the Constructivist group ("A Konstruktivistak
Csoportjanak Programmja") together with "The Realistic
Manifesto" ("Realista Kialtvany") produced in August 1920 by
Naum Gabo and Antoine Pevsner, albeit without mentioning
the authors of either statement.'8 It is possible that the
Prusakov picture reproduced in Egyseg was another exhibit,
since it is captioned "Gepkonstrukcio. Pruszakov
('OBMOHU'). Moszkva. 1921.""' If so, this is the only evidence
concerning the work of other artists in the exhibition.
Although entitled Machine Construction in the Hungarian label,
this is a schematized figurative image, posterlike in style and
apparently evoking the proletariat at work and leisure. It thus
serves to underline the essential innovation of the
Constructivists — their evocation of a contemporary industrial
imagery through the language of materials and abstract form
rather than through illustrative subject matter. The show was
certainly acclaimed at the time for its highly original
explorations of a new kind of constructed sculpture. For
instance, Ulen (possibly Lissitzky writing under a pseudonym),
in a survey of Russian exhibitions published in Object in 1922,
emphasized:
The exhibitions of Obmokhu were new in form. There we saw art
works not only hanging on the walls but also and most importantly
filling the space of the hall.
These young artists have assimilated the experiences of the former
generation, they work well, they have a subtle feeling for the specific
qualities of materials and construct spatial works. Moving between the
technology of the engineers and the aimless expediency of art, they are
trying to progress further. 2°
The artistic innovations of the works exhibited are
discussed in more detail below, but it should be noted that the
attitudes and meanings they embodied were in fact firmly
rooted in contemporary Russian culture. At a very general
level, industry and the machine were seen in revolutionary
Russia as the essential characteristics of the working class and
hence of the new Communist order. More practically,
industrialization was also regarded by the Party and Lenin as
the key to political and social progress and to the consolidation
of the Soviet state. Lenin stated in 1918, after the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk: "Those who have the best technology,
organization, discipline and the best machines emerge on
top ... It is necessary to master the highest technology or be
crushed."2' This attitude was epitomized by his dictum
"Communism equals Soviet power plus the Electrification of
the Entire Country" and by his speech on December 22, 1920,
to the Eighth Congress of Soviets (at which Vladimir Tatlin's
Tower was displayed), in which he envisioned the future in the
hands of the "engineers and agronomists" rather than of the
"politicians."22 With such official endorsement, the ideas of
Henry Ford and Frederick Winslow Taylor concerning
efficiency in industrial production attracted considerable
interest.2' In 1921 the first conference on Taylor's principles of
time and motion (Taylorism) established NOT (the Scientific-
Organization of Work).24 Aleksei Gastev, a poet committed to a
Utopian vision of the triumph of the machine and mechanization
throughout Russian life, ran TsIT (the Central Institute of
Labor), which was dedicated to studying the human machine
and creating a new man through social engineering.2' Platon
Kerzhentsev, who had worked with Gan in Teo Narkompros
(the Theatrical Department of the People's Commissariat of
Enlightenment), wished to "introduce scientific principles not
only into man's economic activity and production but into all
organized activity and work."26 These are merely instances of a
prevalent discourse in which the machine was both metaphor
for a new culture under construction and the practical means to
rebuild the economy for the collective benefit of the people.
Nevertheless, Gan — author of the Constructivists' program
and Kerzhentsev's collaborator — links these ideas directly with
the emergence of Constructivism.
268
fig. 2
View ofObmokhu exhibition, Moscow, May-June ip2i.
269
The same fusion of ideological and practical imperatives
underlay the growing idealization of the machine and the
worker by some factions within the artistic community. In
November 1918 a debate was held in the Winter Palace over the
question of whether art was "A Temple or a Factory."17 Nikolai
Punin, the principal speaker, argued that bourgeois art with its
sacramental character was no longer relevant and that a
proletarian culture would generate a completely new kind of
art: "It is not a matter of decoration but of the creation of new
artistic objects. Art for the proletariat is not a sacred temple for
lazy contemplation but work, a factory, producing artistic
objects for everyone."'8 Later, the newspaper hkusstvo kommuny
(Art of the Commune) argued that the existing division between
art and industry was itself "a survival of bourgeois structures,"29
and Osip Brik announced that "art is like any other means of
production . . . not ideas but a real object is the aim of all true
creativity."30 Such attitudes were reinforced by official policy.
Izo Narkompros (the Department of Fine Arts of the People's
Commissariat of Enlightenment), committed to "art's
penetration into industrial production,"" organized a
conference in August 1919, where the Commissar of
Enlightenment, Anatolii Lunacharskii, pronounced that "there
is no doubt that production art is closer to human life than is
pure art."'2 Subsequently, an Art and Industry Commission was
set up under the Council of People's Commissars to examine
how art could be harnessed to improve the quality of industrial
products."
Since the Revolution, the avant-garde had, with some
success, sought to establish itself as the representative
expression of the new order. Developments after 1919, however,
increasingly involved the accommodation of the new values
and expectations outlined above, prompting a radical
reevaluation of attitudes toward abstraction and traditional
artistic media. Already in February 1919 Punin had declared:
Suprematism has blossomed out in splendid colour all over Moscow.
Posters, exhibitions, cafes — all is Suprematism. And this is
extraordinarily significant. One can confidently assert that the day of
Suprematism is nigh, and on that very day Suprematism must lose its
significance in creative terms.
What was Suprematism? A creative invention without a doubt but
an invention strictly confined to painting. ,4
Kazimir Malevich's departure from Moscow in the autumn of
1919 has indeed been attributed to his "creative isolation,"" and
he later conceded that Suprematism had reached the climax of
its influence that year.'6 Subsequent developments within
Suprematism suggest the wider currency of the impulses
manifest at the Obmokhu exhibition. Significantly, in Vitebsk
Malevich began to adapt the Suprematist vocabulary to suit the
creation of hypothetical architectural complexes.'7 Likewise, his
follower Lissitzky evolved the proun as "an interchange station
between painting and architecture";'8 and, lecturing in Berlin
in 1922, he even declared:
Two groups claimed constructivism, the Obmokhu . . . and the Unovis
{the Affirmers of the New Art) . . .
The former group worked in material and space, the latter in
material and a plane. Both strove to attain the same result, namely the
creation of the real object and of architecture. They are opposed to each
other in their concepts of the practicality and utility of created things.
Some members of the Obmokhu group . . . went as far as a complete
disavowal of art and in their urge to be inventors, devoted their
energies to pure technology. Unovis distinguished between the concept of
functionality, meaning the necessity for the creation of new forms, and
the question of direct serviceableness."
Lissitzky 's distinction was clearly valid by 1922, when positions
had consolidated, although earlier there had perhaps been a
broader consensus in the two groups' explorations of a
machine-age aesthetic. On the one hand, as the Obmokhu
exhibition demonstrates, the Constructivists did not
immediately abandon the making of art objects. On the other,
the Unovis group centered around Malevich also produced
directly functional designs. In November 1920, the group's
magazine published Il'ia Chashnik's project for a speaker's
rostrum (later reworked by Lissitzky and known as the
Leninskaia tribuna [Lenin Tribune, 1924, plate no. 142]), where
the girder construction creates an emphatic aura of industrial
utility.40 Architectural and engineering projects were also
apparently included in the 1920 and 1921 Unovis exhibitions in
Moscow,4' and by early 1921 Unovis had organized an
architectural and technical faculty.42
In the gradual evolution toward a Constructivist stance
within the Moscow avant-garde, particular attention should be
paid to the role of Rodchenko as both artist and polemicist. In
the spring of 1921 he was clearly the leading figure among the
Constructivist contingent at the Obmokhu show. Whereas the
others were still students, Rodchenko was one of the most
progressive teachers at Vkhutemas (the Higher Artistic-
Technical Workshops) set up in December 1920. 43
In January 1919, Rodchenko, Stepanova, Aleksandr Vesnin,
and other members of Askranov (the Association of Extreme
Innovators) had demanded an exhibition space from Izo
Narkompros because of "the sudden death of Suprbez
[Suprematism and Non-Objectivity], its vitality pouring into
the Association of Extreme Innovators."44 Although a cogent
chronology of Rodchenko 's evolution is still needed, it is clear
that in general terms he was seeking to move beyond
Malevich's more "metaphysical" aesthetic. He came to regard
the creative act less as an expression of personal inspiration and
more as a quasi-scientific investigation into the inherent
properties of painting, such as tone, color, line, texture, and
organization. Far from being a Modernist assertion of the
"autonomy" of art, such a standpoint represented an attempt,
akin to that of the Russian literary Formalists at precisely this
time, to reconceive art as a specialized, quasi-scientific activity
and the artist himself as a species of worker.
An aspiration to establish a science of art also inspired the
foundation of Inkhuk in early 1920. *" Rodchenko was among
the original members and was in fact commissioned by the
Institute to write his statement entitled "Liniia" ("The Line,"
1921). In this important text, while discussing new approaches
to the application of paint, to color, and especially to line as the
dominant element in pictorial organization, he declared:
The imprecise, broken line that the hand draws cannot compete
with the straight, accurate ruled line, which gives precision to the
structure.
The craft of painting is striving to become more industrial.
Drawing in the old sense is losing its value and giving way to the
diagram or the engineering drawing.
Faktura in painting . . . is being forced out by mechanical
techniques . . . which make it possible to analyze color, form, and
material scientifically. 4"
The document is a precise evocation of the paintings
Rodchenko was creating around 1919 and 1920, such as
Konstruktsiia No. 97 (Construction No. 97, 1919), in which a
machine-like precision in the articulation of the surface and the
linear construction emphasizes the impersonal and analytical
quality of the painting process. The titles that Rodchenko was
now giving his paintings are expressive of these concerns and
also, of course, interesting in light of the subsequent coining of
270
the term Constructivism.
It is important to be precise about the emergence of a new
critical vocabulary. The noun konstruktsiia (construction), from
the Latin constructio, was well established in Russian usage by
the end of the nineteenth century. Like its English equivalent,
it acquired clear connotations of engineering, referring to the
construction of buildings, technological structures, or
machines.4^ In 1912, the theorist Vladimir Markov had adopted
the term konstruktivnost' (constructiveness) to denote the
rational, logical aspect of art."8 In early 1919, in the radical Art
of the Commune, Ivan Puni used konstruktsiia in its strictly
technical sense when he argued against the idea of production
art and contrasted aesthetic criteria with the demands of
konstruktsiia:
What are the principles of a contemporary industrial construction?
Its principle is maximum utility . . . an artist does not have the right
to interfere with the construction of an object, because an object simply
will not be constructive { konstruktivnyi/ if it is built according to the
two principles of utility and aesthetics.49
Indeed, it was precisely because konstruktsiia carried these
connotations that the terms konstruktor (constructor) or
khudozhnik-konstruktor (artist-constructor) first appeared in an
artistic context to equate the maker of art with a worker in
industry. Thus in December 1918 V. Dmitriev emphasized that
the artist is "now only a constructor and technician. ",c
Harnessing this technological emphasis to his own artistic
techniques, Tatlin called his workshop at the State Free Art
Workshops in Petrograd (where he started teaching in the
spring of 1919) the Workshop of Material, Volume, and
Construction." Certainly, by early 1920, the idea of
construction that underpinned the Constructivists' approach
seems to have emerged sufficiently for Vasilii Kandinskii to
issue a warning in his Inkhuk program:
Without any doubt, positive science can provide the Institute with
extremely valuable material . . . Even though art workers right now
may be working on problems of construction { konstruktsiia/ (art still
has virtually no precise rules), they might try to find a positive
solution too easily and too ardently from the engineer. And they might
accept the engineer's answer as the solution for art — quite erroneously.
This is a very real danger. "
The adoption of the term konstruktsiia to describe the works of
art themselves may have been preceded, in fact, by the coining
of postroenie, from the old Russian root stroi (a building,
structure, or construct). This had a broad range of reference in
general usage, embracing building structures, the construction
of geometrical figures, structures of language and thought, and
even the construction of a socialist society." In the catalogue of
the Tenth State Exhibition, Bespredmetnoe tvorchestvo i
suprematizm {Non-Objective Creation and Suprematism), which
opened in Moscow on April 27, 1919, Liubov' Popova referred
to pictorial structure as postroenie, although she alluded to the
strengths of the pictorial construction as "sily konstruktsii."^ At
the same show, Rodchenko's titling of his 1918 paintings
likewise employed postroenie, as in the groups of works under
the headings of Strogoe, nepodvizhnoe postroenie tsvetovykh ploskostei
(Severe, Static Structure of Colored Planes) and Prostoe postroenie
tsveta (Simple Structure of Color).'''' The emerging artistic
paradigm is epitomized by Gabo's statement in "The Realistic
Manifesto" of August 1920, where he uses the verb stroit'
(to construct) to emphasize the identification between art and
scientific activities: "The plumb-line in our hand, eyes as
precise as a ruler, in a spirit as taut as a compass — we construct
our work as the universe constructs its own, as the engineer
fig- 3
Karl loganson
Study in Balance, ca. ip20.
Whereabouts unknown.
271
constructs his bridges, as the mathematician his formula of the
orbits. ",6
Within a few months, however, konstruktsiia was evidently
replacing postroenie in avant-garde discourse and acquiring a
more specific ideological context. At the Nineteenth State
Exhibition in Moscow in the autumn of 1920, Rodchenko
exhibited sixteen works with the title Konstruktsiia, all but five
dated 1919, alongside other works, of 1918—20, that he called
Kompozitsiia (Composition)." The former were clearly paintings;
the catalogue entry for no. 102 reads Konstruktsiia No. py
(na kornichevom) (Construction No. py {On Brown}), and for no.
117 Konstruktsiia, Maslo, No. 11 (na cbernom) (Construction, Oil,
No. 11 {On Black}, 1920). ,s More research is needed to clarify the
distinction and correlate the surviving works with the two
categories. It appears that the constructions were more linear
and flatly painted, as in Construction No. py, whereas the
compositions seem to have been more planar and spatial, and
more modulated in texture and tone; an entry such as no. 90,
Kompozitsiia No. y8 (chernoe na chemom) (Composition No. y8
{Black on Black}. 1918), recalls such paintings as Cbernoe na
chemom (Black on Black. 1918, plate no. 240). At the exhibition
Rodchenko also showed ten proekty konstruktsii (projects for
constructions) of 1920." These were probably his designs for
Zhivskul'ptarkh (the Synthesis of Painting, Sculpture, and
Architecture Commission), whose display apparently formed
part of the exhibition.''' Nikolai Khardzhiev later recalled
seeing some of Rodchenko 's "pseudo-architectural, dilettantish
projects for buildings and a 'kiosk for the sale of literature.'"'
In this instance, Rodchenko was using konstruktsiia in
accordance with its established engineering usage. However,
the polemical force of this new terminology, with its still more
emphatic implications of a range of experience outside
bourgeois categories of art, was most fully evident in
Rodchenko's more metaphorical appropriation of konstruktsiia
in the context of painting.
The immediate backdrop to the Obmokhu show was the
artists' debates about the distinction between composition and
construction that had been implicit in Rodchenko's
contributions to the Nineteenth State Exhibition. These took
place within the General Working Group of Objective
Analysis at Inkhuk, which was opposed, as its name suggests,
to the more subjective methods for analyzing works of art
favored by Kandinskii, the founder and first director of the
organization.62 The oppositional faction included not only the
future Constructivists but also painters such as Aleksandr
Drevin, Popova, Stepanova, and Nadezhda Udal'tsova, the
architects Vladimir Krinskii and Nikolai Ladovskii, and
sculptors like Aleksei Babichev and Anton Lavinskii. After
four months of discussion, between January and April 1921, the
group gave rise to four distinct Working Groups, of which the
first to be established was the Constructivists'.'"
The participants discussed the issues both in general terms
and in relation to analyses of specific works. They also
produced pairs of drawings illustrating their personal
understanding of what composition and construction entailed.
In their statements, construction was generally conceived in
terms of economy of materials, precision, clarity, and
integration of overall organization, and conversely the absence
of anything decorative, superfluous, or self-consciously
aesthetic. The divergences revolved around certain fundamental
problems. What were the relationships and the distinctions
between construction in art and construction in the real world
11I structural design? How far was the concept of construction
compatible with the medium of painting? In the evaluations of
specific paintings, there was widespread agreement that
Rodchenko's paintings alone authentically possessed the
property of "construction."''4 Yet Rodchenko himself, like
Ioganson, Medunetskii, and the Stenberg brothers, was
increasingly taking the view that construction and painting
were incompatible:
/;/ structures executed on a surface, the "construction " is only the
projection of a potentially real structure, which in its surface form is
merely a particular type of sketch or design, and not a construction as
such.
A construction, which in the strict and pure meaning of the word is
the organization of an actual object, can only be realized as material.6*
The most powerful catalyst to the emergence of three-
dimensional Constructivism was undoubtedly the exhibition in
Moscow, in December 1920, of Tatlin's model for the Pamiatnik
III -emu Internatsionalu (Monument to the Third International,
1919-20, fig. no. 4), greeted by Vladimir Maiakovskii as "the
first object of October.""' Tatlin declared that in this work he
was restoring the essential unity of painting, sculpture, and
architecture, "[combining] purely artistic forms with
utilitarian intentions": "The results of this are models which
stimulate us to inventions in our work of creating a new world
and which call upon producers to exercise control over the
forms encountered in our new everyday life."*7 His monument
was intended, in its ultimate realization, to be a functioning
building, a third higher than the Eiffel Tower, that would act
as an administrative and propaganda center for the Communist
Third International, an organization devoted to fostering world
revolution. Within its open structure of iron beams, four
glazed volumes, rotating at different speeds, were to house the
various executive, legislative, and propaganda offices of the
Comintern. The structural components of contemporary
engineering, iron and glass — for Tatlin, the "materials of the
new Classicism" — were clearly intended to express the new
social order; as Lissitzky later wrote: "Iron is strong, like the
will of the proletariat, glass is clear, like its conscience."61
Likewise the form Tatlin devised, the strong diagonal in
conjunction with the two encircling spirals, expressed in
symbolic terms the soaring Utopian aspirations of Communism
and the dynamic forces of historical progress.69 The skeletal
apparatus represented a distillation of new technology, evoking
the girder construction of the Eiffel Tower itself, oil derricks,
skeleton masts on ships, cranes, and mine shafts. The rotating
transparent volumes within this structure summoned up the
image of an enormous machine with gears and moving parts, a
machine designed to generate world revolution. Appropriately,
Tatlin's Tower was exhibited in the building where the
delegates to the Eighth Congress of Soviets were meeting to
discuss such issues as the electrification of Russia. The
emphasis on utility, along with the scientific and industrial
resonances of Tatlin's simple mathematical forms and
contemporary materials, made the Tower a paradigm of new
artistic possibilities for the avant-garde. The influence of the
project is very apparent in the constructions shown at the third
Obmokhu exhibition a few months later.
The Obmokhu exhibition included both spatial works and
paintings conceived as "constructions." The installation
photographs do not reveal whether Rodchenko exhibited any
paintings. His most recent hanging constructions, however,
clearly visible in fig. no. 2, show a marked change of emphasis
in Rodchenko's three-dimensional work. In his Belaia
bespredmetnaia skul'ptura ( White Non-Objective Sculptures), which
had been exhibited in 1919 (plate no. 290), the focus had been
on building up flat geometric elements, probably made from
card, to create quite complex configurations with overtones of
urban architecture.™ In contrast, the hanging spatial
constructions examined the basic forms of Euclidean geometry
in a more analytical way, investigating their internal spatial
272
fig- 4
Tatlin's model for the Monument to the Third International on
exhibition in Petrograd, November ip20.
273
structure and dynamic potential.
The series seems to have been begun in late 1920; the
square construction was illustrated as Prostranstvennaia veshch'
(Spatial Object) and dated 1920 in Kino-fot {Cinema-Photo) 2
(1922), while the hexagonal work (plate no. 296) was
subsequently reproduced as Prostranstvennaia konstruktsiia
(Spatial Construction) and dated 1921 (Cinema-Photo 4 [1922]).
This dating suggests that Rodchenko explored the simpler
geometrical forms (such as the square) before moving to more
complex forms such as the hexagon and ellipse. At the
exhibition, these hanging works were suspended from a series
of wires attached to the cornices and apparently spanning three
corners of the hall. Only the triangle, ellipse, hexagon, and a
portion of the circle are visible in fig. no. 2, although it is
possible that more were displayed than the photograph
suggests. The existence of at least five of these constructions is
documented: the four works at the Obmokhu exhibition and
the square construction reproduced in Cinema-Photo. Of these,
only one survives: the ellipse (fig. no. 5; compare plate no. 294).
All of the works share a common method of construction.
Concentric geometrical shapes were cut from a single flat piece
of plywood. These essentially two-dimensional elements were
then rotated within each other to form a three-dimensional
construction, with each element held in place by the wire and
the outer element acting as a framework for the whole. After
exhibition, the wires could be removed and the sculptures
collapsed back into a series of flat elements for storage. Indeed,
the various components of the triangle, square, and circle
constructions are visible in the background of the well-known
photograph of Rodchenko in his specially designed work-suit.7'
The constructions explored the growth of a single geometric
form from the plane into three dimensions. The mathematical
emphasis clearly reflects the Constructivists' scientific
orientation. At their inaugural meeting in March 1921 they
had decided to invite a "mathematics expert" as well as an
"engineer-technician" to work in the group, and they later
produced slogans such as "Art is a branch of mathematics, like
all sciences."72 It is probably no coincidence that the closest
visual parallels to Rodchenko 's hanging constructions are
found in modern scientific instruments such as gyroscopes.
The effect of Rodchenko's suspending the works was to
further deny the sensations of mass and materiality. The
dynamic potential was also intensified by the free movement of
the construction on its wire. According to Vladimir Stenberg,
Rodchenko shined lights onto the constructions at the
exhibition to enhance the reflective qualities of the silver-
painted surfaces.71 This suggests that Rodchenko would have
used metal had it been available, and it recalls Tatlin's model
for the Tower, which was also made in wood and painted silver,
although intended ultimately to be constructed in iron. The
simple mathematical forms and the sense of rotation and
movement may likewise have been responses to the rotating
glazed elements within the Tower.
For the younger artists, the three-dimensional work of
Tatlin and Rodchenko demonstrated how a work of art might
embody rather than merely illustrate a machine-age sensibility.
Previously, contemporary technological themes had, indeed,
comprised the subject matter of paintings by the Stenberg
brothers and Medunetskii. Some of these have come to light in
recent years, permitting at least a schematic reconstruction of
these artists' early development. As might be expected, their
work at this time was fairly eclectic.. Both Vladimir Stenberg 's
Worker by the Car (ca. 1920?)74 and Georgii Stenberg 's Crane
(1920) celebrate an industrial imagery appropriate to the new
proletarian society, and their treatment suggests a degree of
fusion between men and machinery. Georgii's painting is less
descriptive, the composition flatter and more dispersed, and
the use of color highly abstract. Such simplifications may have
been a consequence of their concurrent work in poster design.
The linear fluidity of Crane is developed further by Vladimir in
his Tsvetokonstruktsiia No. 4 (Color Construction No. 4, 1920, plate
no. 286), where shapes and lines are disposed within a white
ground, clearly indicating a new awareness of more abstract
developments. In his Tsvetokonstruktsiia No. 13 (Color
Construction No. 13, 1919-20, plate no. 284), the central motif of
four elongated red and black rectangles on a white ground is
almost a direct quotation from Suprematism/5
Among the paintings in the Obmokhu exhibition were
Vladimir's Tsvetokonstruktsiia No. 10 (Color Construction No. 10,
1920-21, plate no. 285), 76 and Tsvetokonstruktsiia No. 12
(Color Construction No. 12, 1920-21, plate no. 283), which
are clearly discernible on the far wall in one view of the
installation (fig. no. 1). The titles recall Rodchenko, as does the
uncompromising austerity of the approach to color and design
in these new works. It is interesting to compare Vladimir's
Color Construction No. 10 with his demonstration of
"composition" (plate no. 244) from the pair of drawings he
made for the Inkhuk debate. The painting is far more
reductive, eliminating tonal modulation and artistic "touch" as
well as rhythmical correspondences in the organization, while
the elements are also less varied and autonomous. By taking
certain lines right out to the frame and by running them
parallel to the edges rather than at a tasteful diagonal, Stenberg
ensured greater integration in the painting between the
internal configuration and the painted object as a whole;
whereas in the drawing, the design is a conventional "vignette"
within a fictive aesthetic space. The painting evokes the
impersonal graphic language of a diagram or some kind of
mathematical illustration and as such it probably corresponds
to Stenberg 's idea of how a painting might be informed with
the quality of "construction." Significantly, however, the
drawing of a "construction" (plate no. 245) produced for the
discussions is a study for a three-dimensional construction.77
Konstruktsiia prostranstvennogo sooruzheniia No. IV (zhelezo)
(Construction of a Spatial Structure No. IV (Iron), 1921, plate
no. 292 [Spatial Construction KPS 42 N /V]),78 shown at the
Obmokhu exhibition, is evidently an elaboration of the same
conception; the curved diagonal is identical, while the vertical
support in the sketch has been developed into a more complex
diagonal and vertical component (each comprising three bars)
and some of the crossbars have been omitted.
The artists' exploration of new materials encompassed
works which occupied an intermediate position between pure
painting and sculpture. Thus another exhibit was Georgii
Stenberg 's relief, Tsvetokonstruktsiia iz mater ialov No. 7 (Color
Construction of Materials No. 7, 1920, plate no. 289), just visible
behind his constructions in fig. no. 2. This utilized a variety of
materials including sand, paper, wire, circular and cylindrical
metal elements, and a glass tube containing ground blue
pigment — an exploration of the diversity of tone and texture
recalling Tatlin's counter-reliefs of 1914-16. Vladimir later
recalled:
They weren't simple color constructions like other artists made. We saw
what other artists were doing and then tried to do it differently.
. . . we had color constructions of four types: one, simple color
constructions; two, color constructions involving texture; three, color
constructions that were like bas-reliefs; and four, color constructions
that involved perspective, that is they were spatial. These were all lost
in a fire. "
A very different approach is evident in Georgii Stenberg 's
freestanding works such as Konstruktsiia prostranstvennogo
sooruzheniia No. 11 (Construction of a Spatial Structure No. II, 1921,
274
17
fig- 5
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Oval Hanging Construction Number 12, ca. Ip20.
Plywood, open construction partially painted with aluminum paint,
and wire, 61 x 83. j x 47 cm.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquisition made possible
through the extraordinary efforts of George and Zinaida Costa kis,
and through the Nate B. and Frances Spingold, Matthew H. and
Erna F utter, and Enid A. Haupt Funds.
275
plate no. 293 [Spatial Construction KPS 51 N XI]), which is built
up with a variety of small I-and T-beam metal elements
enclosing a piece of glass. This work was probably executed in
the spring of 1921 during the composition-versus-construction
debates at Inkhuk and not long before the Obmokhu
exhibition opened. A drawing entitled Proekt konstruktsii
(Project for a Construction, signed and dated 1921) depicts a
structure which is very close to this particular sculpture.80 It
demonstrates the same impulse to invest art with the materials
and the impersonal finish of machine technology that is
manifest in Vladimir Stenberg's Construction of a Spatial
Structure No. 4, which is captioned Hidre'szlet-Konstrukcio (Bridge
Fragment Construction) and dated 1921 in Egyse'g."' The materials
used, more uniform beam elements, evoke the prefabricated
components of engineering construction and the entire
conception here alludes, even more strongly, to a specific
functional structure, or a fragment of one, such as a bridge or
crane. The implied monumentality echoes Tatlin's Tower, as, of
course, does the skeletal structure of standardized components
and the general shift toward a machine aesthetic. Vladimir
Stenberg later stressed that his constructions at this time were
actually conceived as explorations that would eventually lead to
projects for actual buildings.82 Despite this assertion, the
construction seems to have no direct technological application,
but rather to exploit the language of technology to create an
art work. It could even be argued, as Babichev did in 1922, that
such works were "not rooted in any technical work" and were
"in no way utilitarian" but represented "the confirmation of a
new mechanical aestheticism."81
Not surprisingly, in view of their friendship, Medunetskii's
artistic formation seems to closely parallel that of the Stenberg
brothers. Celebration (ca. 1919), showing workers attending a
revolutionary festival, recalls their work both formally and
thematically.84 His painted Tsvetokonstruktsiia (Color Construction,
1920, plate no. 278), has affinities with Georgii's Crane in its
fluid handling and vivid color, and although Medunetskii's
painting is ostensibly more abstract, it too evokes an imagery
of metallic machine components. In Tsvetokonstruktsiia No. 7
(Color Construction No. 7, 1921, plate no. 280), shown at the
Obmokhu exhibition, the linear precision is analogous to that
of Vladimir's Color Construction No. 10, and clearly the dominant
influence on his work is Rodchenko. Likewise, Medunetskii's
Tsvetokonstruktsiia No. 9 (Color Construction No. p, 1920-21, plate
no. 279),8( is reminiscent of Rodchenko's Black on Black
paintings, which were exhibited at the Tenth State Exhibition,
as well as his linear "constructions" of 1920. At the same time,
it evokes an imagery of light projection.
Medunetskii's three-dimensional works (visible in fig.
nos. 1—2) seem more purely abstract, less suggestive of
functional forms than the Stenbergs' sculptures. They do,
however, use industrially produced materials and elements.
Thus in the one extant work, Konstruktsiia prostranstvennogo
sooruzheniia (Construction oj a Spatial Structure, usually known as
Spatial Construction, 1920-21, plate no. 282), the metal circle has
ridges on the inside and was evidently some type of coupling
ring."'' Yet the relationships between the components are far
removed from those of any engineering structure. The shapes
thread through each other with the minimum of contact,
creating a very open, dematerialized form. Within this
unifying configuration, the bent iron rod, painted red, is
visually contrasted with the yellow sheen of the brass triangle,
the more matte quality of the zinc ring, the S-shaped tin strip,
and the painted marbling on the hollow cuboid, metal base.
The construction is clearly an attempt to develop into three
dimensions the type of linear spatial structure implied fictively
in paintings such as Color Construction No. p. This was equally
true of the linear "drawing in space" of Medunetskii's lost iron
and tin Spatial Construction (1921, plate no. 281. 1), known from a
photograph and also visible, alongside a series of comparable
works, in one view of the Obmokhu installation.
It is unclear whether Ioganson included any paintings, but
his constructions, too, demonstrate a preoccupation with linear
structure. In 1929, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy illustrated one of
Ioganson's works from the exhibition (fig. no. 3) as a Study in
Balance, explaining that if the string was pulled the
composition would change to another position and
configuration while maintaining its equilibrium. 8" The
similarity between the manner of jointing in Study in Balance
and that of the other constructions by Ioganson on display
(for example, fig. no. 6) suggests that all the works could be
adjusted and possibly collapsed and that he was exploring the
movement of skeletal, geometric structures in a more
pragmatically experimental and explicitly technical manner
than was Rodchenko in his hanging constructions. Ioganson's
works do not evoke any specific structure, yet the use of
standardized elements and the emphasis on the transformation
of form might appear to have more direct application to
utilitarian structures such as portable, fold-up kiosks or
collapsible items of furniture. These "laboratory" works seem
to have been made from wood, which probably reflects the
shortage of alternative materials at this time. Ioganson's
particularly rigorous antiaestheticism expressed in these works
was forcefully articulated the following year:
Artists who used to paint pictures are rejecting the picture and are
going over to the construction or "into industry, " as the customary
expression has it. But this approach to the construction employs the
devices, the method, and the tools of "the old art" without a practical
objective or a definite goal, such as is required for mechanical
construction. ss
In early 1922, Medunetskii and the Stenberg brothers
also presented a paper entitled "Konstruktivizm"
("Constructivism") at Inkhuk. They argued that the new
approach was a response to the enfeebled state of contemporary
"production culture," conditioned by "aesthetics," an
inappropriate use of materials, and a wholly inadequate design
methodology. In contrast, they defined the essential principles
of Constructivism as spatial economy, functionalism, efficiency
in the use of industrial materials, and rhythm resulting from
the application of engineering technology. Finally, according to
the surviving summary, they defined their own achievements
and mission:
The first experimental works and their significance as propaganda.
The abstract solution of the basic problems of Constructivism.
The experimental design of the material spatial construction, and
its interrelation with utility.
Achievements in space, form, and rhythm.
The communist expression of material spatial constructions.
Russian industry under the banner of Constructivism and its
significance in the world market. *
This makes it clear that, from the start, the Constructivists
were concerned not merely to promote a new aesthetic but to
demonstrate their potential capabilities as designers of real
objects and structures. "The first experimental works and their
significance as propaganda" is presumably a reference to the
1921 Obmokhu exhibition, where they had sought to display
their understanding of the essential principles of engineering
construction, and their formal inventiveness within that
framework, for the benefit of any manufacturers,
administrators, or politicians who might care to observe and to
give the artists a concrete role in building the new socialist
276
environment. Theirs was an immensely ambitious and
idealistic outlook, perhaps conceivable only at a time when, in
practice, almost nothing was being made or built in Russia.
However, 1921, which witnessed the birth of the Constructivist
movement in art, also saw the implementation of the New
Economic Policy and the first stirrings of a revival of industrial
production. By the following year the Constructivist ethos was
gaining increased currency among the avant-garde, and many
Russian artists had, in a more wholesale fashion, renounced the
making of paintings and sculptures in favor of immersing
themselves in the design of buildings and propaganda stands,
furniture and textiles, posters, advertisements, and books. The
Obmokhu exhibition in the spring of 1921 marked a key
moment in the transition toward an authentically
Constructivist practice.
fig. 6
Karl loganson
Spatial Construction, ca.
Wood and metal wire.
Whereabouts unknown.
1921.
277
Notes
I should like to express my profound gratitude to my husband
Martin Hammer for his invaluable contribution to both the
content and form of this essay.
The epigraphs are from Aleksei Gan, Konstruktivizm (Tver1:
Tverskoe izdatel'stvo, 1922), p. 19, as translated in John E.
Bowlt, ed., Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism,
1902-1954 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), p. 222, and
Karl Ioganson, "From Construction to Technology and
Invention," trans. James West, in Art Into Life: Russian
Constructivism, 1914-1952, catalogue for exhibition organized by
the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, the
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the State Tret'yakov
Gallery, Moscow (New York: Rizzoli, 1990), p. 70.
1. See "Programma uchebnoi podgruppy konstruktivistov
INKhUKa," 1921, private archive, Moscow, and "Report
No. 1. The Assembly for the Organisation of the Working
Group of Constructivists of Inkhuk" held on March 18, 1921,
in S. O. Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko: The Complete Work,
ed. Vieri Quilici, trans. Huw Evans (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1986), pp. 289-90.
For details concerning Inkhuk, see Christina Lodder,
Russian Constructivism (New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1983), pp. 78ff. and Khan-Magomedov,
Rodchenko, pp. 55ff.
The name of the group has been given variously as the
Working Group of Constructivists and the First Working
Group of Constructivists. Archival material usually omits
"First," but the group's first public pronouncement, published
in August 1922 in the Moscow journal Ermitazh (Hermitage),
used both names. See "Front khudozhestvennogo truda.
Materialy k Vserossiiskoi konferentsii levykh v iskusstve.
Konstruktivisty. Pervaia programma rabochei gruppy
konstruktivistov," Ermitazh 13 (1922), pp. 3-4. The
introduction in Ermitazh gave the group its full title, declaring
that: "On December 13, 1920, the First Working Group of
Constructivists was formed" (ibid., p. 3). It cited Rodchenko,
Stepanova, and Gan as the founders and stated: "Directing
their attention to the future culture of Communism and
proceeding from present specific conditions, they worked out a
program and production plan and started to enlist
collaborators." These remarks were followed by "The First
Program of the Working Group of Constructivists." The
presence of both names in this publication suggests that they
were used concurrently and interchangeably.
There is no archival evidence to support the assertion made
in the Ermitazh announcement that the group was founded in
December 1920. Gan repeated this elsewhere, notably in
"Chto takoe konstruktivizm?" Sovremennaia arkhitektura 3
(1928), p. 79, and in Konstruktivizm, p. 3, where he also dates
the group to 1920. Gan joined Inkhuk in 1920 (see Khan-
Magomedov, Rodchenko, p. 57), and although his participation
in the debates is not documented fully, it is possible that the
crystallization of the group's ideas and membership may have
begun informally toward the end of 1920. The archives,
however, suggest that the group's inaugural meeting was held
on March 18, 1921 (see "Report No. 1," in Khan-Magomedov,
Rodchenko, p. 289). Although Gan was not present, he was
chosen to be a member of the organizing group and it was
decided to invite him to work in the group (ibid., items 2
and 7). Ten days later, he presented his report on the program
and work plan ("Report No. 2. Meeting of the Plenum of the
Working Group of Constructivists of Inkhuk," ibid., p. 290). It
is clear from the transcription of the ensuing discussion that
Gan was responsible for the terms tektonika, faktura, and
"construction," as well as for the attempt to create a coherent
theory from the artists' rather vague ideas and aspirations
(ibid., pp. 92-93 n. 14). It is also evident that although his
program was ultimately accepted on April 1, 1921, there was a
great deal of divergence among the members over precise
meanings and specific details (ibid., p. 92).
2. All are listed in "Report No. 2," in Khan-Magomedov,
Rodchenko, p. 290.
3. See "Protokol zasedaniia INKhUKa," January 1, 1921 and
January 21, 1921, private archive, Moscow.
4. "Programma uchebnoi podgruppy" and Gan's draft program
of the group that was approved on April 1, 1921 (reprinted as
"Programme of the Working Group of Constructivists of
Inkhuk," in Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko, p. 290). The draft
program, with few alterations, was published in August 1922
in Ermitazh under "Front khudozhestvennogo truda." These
ideas were further elaborated in Gan's treatise Konstruktivizm,
which had appeared by the summer of 1922, when it was
reviewed. See V. Zhemchuzhnyi, "Aleksei Gan
'Konstruktivizm,'" Ermitazh 9 (1922), p. 8.
5. See "Programme of the Working Group of Constructivists of
Inkhuk," in Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko, p. 290, and the
discussion of the March 28, 1921 meeting, ibid., p. 92 n. 14.
6. Date of opening from invitation card reproduced in Szymon
Bojko, "Rodchenko's Early Spatial Constructions," in Von der
Fldche zutn Raum/From Surface to Space: Russia, 1916-24,
catalogue for exhibition organized by the Galerie Gmurzynska,
Cologne (Cologne: Galerie Gmurzynska, 1974), p. 18.
The invitation card referred to the show as the group's
Second Spring Exhibition. According to V. M. Lobanov, the
earliest chronicler of Obmokhu (writing in 1930), the 1921
show was the group's third exhibition. He listed four
exhibitions organized by Obmokhu between its founding in
1919 and its dissolution in 1923. According to him, these shows
took place in 1919, 1920, 1921, and 1922, the last in conjunction
with the Fourth Congress of the Comintern in the summer of
that year. (See V. M. Lobanov, Khudozhestvennye gruppirovki za
poslednie 2$ let {Moscow: Obshchestvo AKhR, 1930], pp. 104-5).
Lobanov 's account has formed the basis for work by other
scholars (see Vystavki sovetskogo izobrazitel'nogo iskusstva.
Spravochnik [Moscow: Sovetskii khudozhnik, 1965], vol. 1,
pp. 37, 59, 74). Lobanov 's labeling of the 1921 exhibition as the
group's third show was also confirmed by Vladimir Stenberg
(conversation with author, April 1974).
However, Aleksandra Shatskikh argues, on the basis of the
correspondence between Georgii Echeistov and Georgii
Shchetinin, that the group acquired its name only after
September 1919, being initially called Obmolkhud, and that
its first exhibition was held in May 1920, not in 1919 (see
Aleksandra Shatskikh, "A Brief History of Obmokhu," in
this volume). A contemporary review of the May 1920
exhibition, which explains the group's acronym, confirms this
(A. A. Sidorov, "Khudozhestvennye vystavki," Tvorchestvo 2—4
[1920], p. 34). Although Lobanov gave the wrong year, the
details of the show, as listed on the poster (reproduced by
Shatskikh), correspond with Lobanov 's account of the first
exhibition, i.e., that it was held in the spring (opening on May
2nd) at the First State Free Art Workshops on Rozhdestvenka,
and that Anatolii Lunacharskii and Lev Kamenev spoke at the
opening. However, Lobanov 's assertion that the first exhibition
consisted entirely of agitational work does not accord with
Sidorov's review, which described paintings and even a
sculpture. Lobanov stated that the first exhibition (exclusively
agitational work) was held on Rozhdestvenka, while the second
(posters plus more formal investigations) was held in the
278
group's studio in the former Faberge shop on the corner of
Neglinnaia Street and Kuznetskii most. Although this indeed
was the location of their studio, his account is somewhat
confused. Certainly there seems to be no reason for Lobanov to
have exaggerated Obmokhu's importance by adding another
exhibition; although Obmokhu was an agitational and
collective organization, its interest in formal experimentation
was far removed from the Realist cause Lobanov espoused. In
view of this — and given Vladimir Stenberg's assertions — it is
possible that there were four shows in all and that there was
another exhibition devoted entirely to agitational work. It is
possible, moreover, that such an exhibition took place prior to
the May 1920 exhibition, and this would explain why the
opening of the May 1920 show — a show, after all, by a new
group of young artists — had such a lineup of eminent speakers
(Lunacharskii, Kamenev, Ol'ga Kameneva, David Shterenberg,
Osip Brik, and Georgii Iakulov). Likewise, it is possible that
there was another exhibition, perhaps more informal, in
Obmokhu's studio at some time after the May 1920 show and
before the end of the year. As the first exhibition opened in the
spring, the 1921 show could still have been the group's Second
Spring Exhibition as well as its third show overall. Certainly the
inclusion of "spring" in the title is puzzling, particularly since
it is more reminiscent of the salons of czarist Russia than of the
postrevolutionary avant-garde.
7. The contributors are listed on the invitation card,
reproduced in Bojko, "Rodchenko's Early Spatial
Constructions," p. 18.
8. Shatskikh, "Brief History of Obmokhu." It was registered
within the Subsection for Artistic Work of Izo Narkompros
before May 1920. "Iz deiatel'nosti IZO," IZO. Vestnik Otdela
izobrazitel'nykh iskusstv N.K.P. 1 (March 10, 1921), p. 4.
9. See Alma Law, "A Conversation with Vladimir Stenberg,"
Art Journal, Fall 1981, p. 223 and E. A. Speranskaia, ed.,
Agitatsionno-massovoe iskusstvo pervykh let Oktiabria. Material}1
i issledovaniia (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1971), p. 70.
10. Speranskaia, Agitatsionno-massovoe iskusstvo, pp. 92, 125
n. 167.
11. Lobanov, Khudozhestvennye gruppirovki, pp. 104-5. If also
contained "leiye iskaniia" (left-wing or avant-garde
explorations) which are not described. Clearly, for Lobanov the
importance of Obmokhu lay in the fact that the "Productionist
aspirations of the participants dominated over easel painting."
Ibid., p. 106.
12. Sidorov, "Khudozhestvennye vystavki." He also suggests
that this statue is well riveted.
13. Vladimir Stenberg, conversation with author, November
1974. See note 6 above.
14. Law, "Conversation with Vladimir Stenberg," p. 224.
The invitation gave the address as 11 Bol'shaia Dmitrovka
(reproduced in Bojko, "Rodchenko's Early Spatial
Constructions," p. 18).
15. See Ulen, "Die Ausstellungen in Russland,"
Vesbch'/Gegenstand/Objet 1-2 (1922), p. 19, reprinted in I. Matsa,
ed., Sovetskoe iskusstvo za 15 let. Materia ly i dokumentatsiia
(Moscow and Leningrad: Ogiz-Izogiz, 1933), p. 138, where it is
dated 1920.
16. See Egyseg 2 (1922), p. 9.
17. Ibid., p. 7. The issue also contained photographs of a Gabo
relief (p. 8) and an Unovis composition exhibited in Moscow in
1921 (p. 10).
18. Ibid., pp. 5-6.
19. Ibid., p. 8.
20. Ulen, "Die Ausstellungen in Russland," p. 19.
21. Quoted in Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian
Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York
and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 147.
22. V I. Lenin, "Iz doklada Vserossiiskogo tsentral'nogo
ispolnitel'nogo komiteta i Soveta narodnykh komissarov o
vneshnei i vnutrennei politike 22 dekabria," in his Polnoe
sobranie sochinenii (1919), reprinted in Matsa, Sovetskoe iskusstvo
za is let, pp. 63-64.
23. See Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, pp. 145—64. For
contemporary enthusiasm about Ford's ideas, see
I. M. Burdianskii, Nauchnaia organizatsiia truda (Leningrad:
Priboi, 1925), pp. 23-25.
24. See L. Pamilla and V Chukovich, NOT — velenie vremeni
(Minsk: Belarus, 1973).
25. See E. H. Carr, Socialism in One Country, Ip24~ip26 (London:
Penguin, 1970), pp. 409-11.
26. P. M. Kerzhentsev, Printsipy organizatsii. Izbrannye
proizvedeniia (Moscow: Ekonomika, 1968), p. 275, quoted in
Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, p. 156.
27. M. L-in, "Miting ob iskusstve," Iskusstvo kommuny 1
(December 7, 1918), pp. 3-4, reprinted as "Miting ob iskusstve
(24 XI 1918 g. v Petrograde)," in Matsa, Sovetskoe iskusstvo za
iSlet, pp. 173-76.
28. Nikolai Punin, quoted in "Miting ob iskusstve," in Matsa,
Sovetskoe iskusstvo za islet, pp. 175—76.
29. "Primechanie redaktsii," Iskusstvo kommuny 8 (January 26,
1919), p. 2.
30. Osip Brik "Drenazh iskusstvu," Iskusstvo kommuny 1
(December 7, 1918), p. 1.
31. David Shterenberg, "Pora poniat'," Iskusstvo v proizvodstve
(Moscow: IZO Narkompros, 1921), p. 5.
32. "Rech' Narodnogo kommissara po prosveshcheniiu
A. V Lunarcharskogo," in Pervaia vserossiiskaia konferentsiia po
khudozhestvennoi promysblennosti. Avgust ipip (Moscow: Podotdel
khudozhestvennoi promyshlennosti Otdela izobrazitel'nykh
iskusstv NKP, 1920), pp. 63-64.
33. See N. Kol'tsova, "Programma-deklaratsiia
khudozhestvenno-proizvodstvennoi komissi," Tekbnicheskaia
estetika 10 (1967), pp. 14-15.
34. Nikolai Punin, "O novykh gruppirovkakh," Iskusstvo
kommuny 10 (February 9, 1919), as translated in Larissa Zhadova,
Malevich: Suprematism and Revolution in Russian Art ipio-ipjO.
trans. Alexander Lieven (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982),
p. 322.
35. Anatolii Strigalev, "The Art of the Constructivists: From
Exhibition to Exhibition, 1914— 1932," trans. James West, in
Art Into Life. p. 29.
36. K. Malevich, "Sorok piat'. Vvedenie v teoriiu o
pribavochnom elemente v zhivopise," 1925, private archive,
Moscow, p. 81, quoted in Zhadova, Malevich. pp. 81, 130 n. 32.
37. See Zhadova, Malevich, pp. 96ff.
38. El Lissitzky and Hans Arp, Die Kunstismen, IP14-1924
(Zurich-Munich-Leipzig: Eugen Rentsch Verlag, 1925), p. xi.
Architectural titles for Lissitzky's prouns abound, e.g., Proun
279
iE. Gorod. Eskiz (Sketch for Proun iE: Town, 1919—20, plate no.
206). See Peter Nisbet, "An Introduction to El Lissitzky," in
El Lissitzky, 1890-1941, catalogue for exhibition organized by
the Busch-Reisinger Museum, the Sprengel Museum Hanover,
and the Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg Halle (Cambridge:
Harvard University Art Museums, 1987), pp. 20-21.
39. El Lissitzky, "New Russian Art: A Lecture," in Sophie
Lissitzky-Kiippers, El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, trans. Helene
Aldwinckle and Mary Whittall (London: Thames and Hudson,
1968), p. 340.
40. Chashnik's project was published in UNOVIS. Listok 1
(November 20, 1920).
41. Zhadova, Malevicb, pp. Syff.
42. II. Chashnik, "Arkhitekturno-tekhnicheskii fakul'tet,"
UNOVIS 2 (January 1921), pp. 12-15.
43. See Izvestiia VTsIK, December 25, 1920.
44. Quoted in German Karginov, Rodchenko, trans. Elisabeth
Hoch (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979), p. 60.
45. Of course, artists and writers such as David Burliuk and
Vladimir Markov had begun the process of establishing a more
scientific basis for artistic analysis before the Revolution.
Indeed, it was Burliuk who had introduced the French term for
the texture of the painted surface, facture, into Russian as
faktura in 1912. (See his articles "Kubizm" and "Faktura" in
Poshchecbina obshchestvennomu vkusu, December 1912 or January
1913, pp. 95-101 and 102—10; the former is translated in Bowlt,
Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, pp. 70-77). By 1914 Markov had
explored in minute detail the practical and philosophical
ramifications of the term faktura in relation to various arts and
crafts (including sculpture, architecture, and icon painting),
nature, and the machine. (See Vladimir Markov, Printsipy
tvorcbestva v plasticbeskikh iskusstvakh. Faktura [St. Petersburg:
Souiz molodezhi, 1914}). The importance of this process of
analysis was endorsed by Izo Narkompros in February 1919 in
its statement concerning "artistic culture," which emphasized
the need to create precise definitions of "the elements of artistic
activity" and to establish "objective criteria of artistic value."
See "Polozhenie Otdela izobrazitel'nykh iskusstv i
khudozhestvennoi promyshlennosti NKP po voprosu 'o
khudozhestvennoi kul'tury,'" Iskusstvo kommuny 11 (February 16,
1919), reprinted in Matsa, Sovetskoe iskusstvo za islet, pp. 63-64.
46. A. M. Rodchenko, "The Line," trans. James West, in Art
Into Life, p. 73.
47. See V I. Dal1, Tolkovyi slovar' zhivogo velikorusskogo iazyka,
vol. 2 (Moscow and St. Petersburg, 1881), p. 152, where
konstruktsiia is applied to buildings as well as to the structure
of language; and the more detailed later definition in
D. N. Ushakov, Tolkovyi slovar ' russkogo iazyka, vol. 1 (Moscow:
Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1935), p. 1443.
48. See Vladimir Markov, "Printsipy novogo iskusstva," Soiuz
molodezhi 1 (April 1912), pp. 5-14, and Soiuz molodezhi 2 (June
1912), pp. 5-18, translated in Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-
Garde, pp. 25-38.
49. Ivan Puni, "Tvorchestvo zhizni," Iskusstvo kommuny 5
(January 5, 1919), p. 1.
50. See V Dmitriev, "Pervyi itog," Iskusstvo kommuny 15 (March
16, 1919), p. 3.
51. See Anatolii Strigalev, "From Painting to the Construction
of Matter," in Zhadova, Tatlin, p. 24.
52. Vasily Kandinsky, "Program for the Institute of Artistic
Culture," in Kenneth Lindsay and Peter Vergo, eds., Kandinsky:
Complete Writings on Art (London: Faber and Faber, 1982),
p. 471.
53. See D. N. Ushakov, Tolkovyi slovar' russkogo iazyka, vol. 3
(Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1939), p. 648.
54. See "Liubov1 Popova," in Desiataia gosudarstvennaia vystavka.
Bespredmetnoe tvorchestvo i suprematizm (Moscow: Otdel IZO
Narkomprosa, 1919), reprinted in Matsa, Sovetskoe iskusstvo za
IS let, p. 112. In the same statement, she also used the term
akonstruktivnost' (noncomtruct'ivenes,?,) to denote the absence of
construction and hence the antithesis of arkhitektonika
(architectonics). The date of the opening of this show is given
in Strigalev, "Art of the Constructivists," p. 28. Zhivopisnoe
postroenie (painterly structure) or zhivopisnoi stroi (painterly
construct) were also used by other artists to denote pictorial
structure. See statements such as those by Aleksandr
Shevchenko and Aleksei Grishchenko in the catalogue of the
Dvenadtsataia gosudarstvennaia vystavka. Tsvetodinamos i
tektonicheskii primitivizm (Moscow: Otdel IZO Narkomprosa,
1919), reprinted in Matsa, Sovetskoe iskusstvo za is let, pp. 117-20.
Occasionally struktura (structure) was also used.
55. See Desiataia gosudarstvennaia vystavka, in Matsa, Sovetskoe
iskusstvo za islet, p. 113.
56. Naum Gabo and Noton Pevzner [Antoine Pevsner],
"Realisticheskii manifest," August 1920, original and
translation reprinted in Gabo: Constructions, Sculpture, Paintings,
Drawings, Engravings (London: Lund Humphries, 1957), p. 152.
57. XIX vystavka VTsVB (Moscow: Otdel IZO Narkomprosa,
1920), nos. 93-107 and 117. According to Rodchenko, this
exhibition opened on October 2nd (see his recollections quoted
in Karginov, Rodchenko, p. 86).
58. XIX vystavka VTsVB, pp. 8-9.
59. XIX vystavka VTsVB, nos. 125-34.
60. Strigalev, "Art of the Constructivists," p. 31.
61. Nikolai Khardzhiev, K istorii russkogo avangarda (Stockholm:
Hylaea Prints, 1976), p. 124 n. 2.
Khan-Magomedov stated that Rodchenko exhibited the
kiosk and Sovdep (Soviet of Deputies building) designs along
with twenty other sketches at this show (Khan-Magomedov,
Rodchenko, p. 54).
62. For more details on the debates, see Khan-Magomedov,
Rodchenko, pp. 83—89 and Lodder, Russian Constructivism,
pp. 83-89.
63. See Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko, pp. 83-89 and Lodder,
Russian Constructivism, pp. 83—89.
64. See Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko, p. 84 and the
transcription of the discussion of Rodchenko 's Dva kruga
(Two Circles, ca. 1920), ibid., pp. 87-88 n. 5.
65. Rodchenko, "Line," p. 73.
66. Nikolai Khardzhiev, "Maiakoyskii i Tatlin. K 90-letiiu so
dnia rozhdeniia khudozhnika," reprinted in Neue russische
Literatur. Almanack (Salzburg, 1978), p. 90.
67. See V Tatlin, T Shapiro, I. Meerzon, and P. Vinogradov,
"Nasha predstoiashchaia rabota," VIII s"ezd sovetov. Ezhednevnyi
biulleten' s"ezda 13 (January 1, 1921), p. II. Translation adapted
from "The Work Ahead of Us," in Vladimir Tatlin (Stockholm:
Moderna Museet, 1968), p. 51.
280
68. See Tatlin et al., "Nasha predstoiashchaia rabota," p. n, and
Lissitzky, "New Russian Art," p. 337.
69. See Christina Lodder, "Tallin's Monument to the
Third International as a Symbol of Revolution," in Gabriel P.
Weisberg and Laurinda S. Dixon, eds., The Documented Image:
Visions in Art History (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,
1987), pp. 275-88.
70. These works were dated 1918 when they were reproduced in
1922 in Kino-fot 5 (1922). They were, however, exhibited at the
Tenth State Exhibition in 1919 under the title of White Non-
Objective Sculptures.
71. See Lodder, Russian Constructivism, plate 1.33.
72. See "Report No. 1," March 18, 1921, and the list of slogans
in "Programme of the Working Group of Constructivists of
Inkhuk," in Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko. pp. 289, 291.
73. Vladimir Stenberg, conversation with author, November
1974-
74. Worker by the Car, oil on canvas, 71 x 89 cm, State
Architecture and Art Museum, Rostov-Iaroslavskii, reproduced
in Avantgarde. ipio-ip^o: Russian and Soviet Art (Turku: Turku
Art Museum, 1989), p. 54, details on p. 63.
75. The title is inscribed on the verso with the date 1918
(Giovanni Carandente, ed., Arte russa e sovietica. 1870-1930
[Milan: Fabbri, 1989}, p. 387). The date is more likely to be
ca. 1920; the inscription is of questionable value since it could
have been made any time before the work was acquired by the
Tret'iakov in 1984.
j6. Andrei Nakov, however, identifies Color Construction No. 10
as a Proekt prostranstvenno-konstruktivnogo sooruzheniia (Project for
a Spatial-Constructive Structure). See A. B. Nakov, 2 Stenberg 2.
catalogue for exhibition organized by the Annely Juda Gallery,
London (London: Annely Juda Gallery, 1975), p. 42. He asserts
that works with such titles were "two-dimensional projects for
three-dimensional works" (ibid., p. 71). Such a description
could be applied to Color Construction No. 10. which has a
stronger sculptural emphasis than the other paintings given
this title (e.g., Color Construction No. 12). There is no Project for a
Spatial-Constructive Structure No. 10 listed in the January 1922
exhibition catalogue, the highest number in that series of
works shown being no. 6 (see Konstruktivisty. K. K. Medunetskii,
V. A. Stenberg. G. A. Stenberg [Moscow: Kafe poetov, 1922],
no. 41). Nevertheless, it is possible that Color Construction No. 10
has been mistitled and that Nakov s title is correct.
77. The drawing was probably executed in late 1920 or early
1921, while its Composition counterpart is dated 1920. Other
drawings in the Inkhuk portfolio of the Costakis Collection are
dated 1920 or April 1921, when the debate was concluded. For
instance, Ioganson's pair of Composition and Construction
drawings are dated April 7, 1921, Ladovskii's April 15, 1921,
while Medunetskii's Construction is dated 1920. See Angelica
Zander Rudenstine, ed., Russian Avant-Garde Art: The George
Costakis Collection (New York: Abrams, 1981), pp. 110-27.
78. Title taken from Konstruktivisty. no. 42. It was identified by
the artist in a conversation with the author, April 1974.
79. Law, "Conversation with Vladimir Stenberg," p. 225.
80. State Tret'iakov Gallery, Moscow, Soviet Graphics
Inventory no. 13045, reproduced in Art Into Life. p. 95.
81. See Egyseg 2 (1922), p. 7. The title for these works employed
by the Stenbergs in January 1922 in their exhibition catalogue
Konstruktivisty was Konstruktsiia prostranstvennogo sooruzheniia.
Andrei Nakov identified this particular work as Konstruktsiia
prostranstvennogo sooruzheniia IV. catalogue no. 4 (see Nakov, 2
Stenberg 2. p. 72).
82. Vladimir Stenberg, conversation with author, November
1974-
83. Aleksei Babichev, untitled notes, private archive, Moscow.
The full quotation is cited in Lodder, Russian Constructivism.
p. 97. Similar observations were made by Lissitzky in "New
Russian Art," p. 337.
84. Konstantin Medunetskii, Celebration, undated, ca. 1919,
oil on canvas, measurements unknown, Museum of Fine Arts,
Syktyvkar. Reproduced in Avantgarde. ipio-ip$o, p. 45,
details on p. 62.
85. The signature and date of 1921 on Color Construction No. 7
suggest that Color Construction No. p was also produced in 1921,
although it is dated 1920 in Art Into Life. p. 46.
86. It was illustrated in the catalogue of the Erste russische
Kunstausstellung (First Russian Art Exhibition) under the title
Raumkonstruktion (Spatial Construction). See Erste russische
Kunstausstellung (Berlin: Galerie van Diemen, 1922).
87. L. Moholy-Nagy, The New Vision: From Material to
Architecture (New York: Brener, Warren and Putnam, 1930),
p. 109.
88. Karl Ioganson, "From Construction to Technology and
Invention," p. 70.
89. K. Medunetskii, V Stenberg, and G. Stenberg, "Outline of
the Report on 'Constructivism,'" trans. James West, in Art Into
Life. p. 82.
281
fig. I
Display of student work from the color discipline, Basic Division,
Vkhutemas, 1926.
282
The Place of Vkhutemas
in the Russian Avant-
Garde
Natal'ia Adaskina
The Moscow Vkhutemas (the Higher Artistic-Technical
Workshops) has traditionally been regarded as one of the most
significant centers of the Russian avant-garde. Its prominence
was owing not solely to the natural confluence within its walls
of many of the avant-garde's leading members but also — and
with greater reason — to its having been there, in the
workshops, that the principles of avant-garde artistic culture
were forcefully revealed.
Even as Vkhutemas was being organized, in order to
accommodate a number of changes demanded by the evolution
of art, the need to derive teaching methods suited to the new
artistic trends was one of the school's reasons for being.
Analytical methods of investigating artistic form — methods
born of the avant-garde's experimentation — were the
cornerstone of Vkhutemas 's pedagogical system. At
Vkhutemas, the fundamental tendencies of the avant-garde
movement were theorized and developed. Here, too, the
contradictions that had accumulated within the avant-garde,
the conflicts among its various strands, and the crises in its
development were in dramatic evidence.
The creation and operation of Vkhutemas were not, of
course, joined solely to considerations of the avant-garde;
Vkhutemas was an institution with links to the artistic
currents in Russian culture of the 1920s as a whole. The spirit
of the avant-garde, however, and the tasks of the avant-garde
movement shaped what was most essential in its character. The
program of study and the teaching methods employed at
Vkhutemas embodied in full the chief tenets and
contradictions of the avant-garde: an orientation toward artistic
experimentation; exploration of form; maximally individual,
subjective creation uneasily allied with the search for
collective, objective knowledge in the products of artistic
experimentation; solution of the dilemma of analysis and
synthesis in artistic practice and in the theorization of
contemporary art; the variance between the avant-garde's
programmatic orientation toward absolute innovation and the
historicism that was characteristic of leading vanguard artists;
and the search for ways to resolve the conflict between an
orientation toward the irreplicably personal, the unique
creation of genius, and an interest in industrial production,
mechanical reproduction, and the organization of the life of the
masses.
Before proceeding to the heart of this essay, a brief review of
the history and structure of Vkhutemas is in order.1 This
summary is indispensable, inasmuch as where Vkhutemas has
been described by scholars, it has often appeared to be a
peculiar chimera, made up of elements which could not
possibly have coexisted (but which did, in fact, characterize it
at various times). It is essential that the reader have some
notion of a structure that underwent continuous, and at times
fundamental, change.
From the latter half of the nineteenth century, the system of
art education in Russia, centered on the Imperial Academy of
Arts, had been in a state of profound crisis. Piecemeal reforms
were no solution: the system could not accommodate new
artistic phenomena, which existed apart from and even in
defiance of academic orientations; nor was it able to meet the
demands which industrial development placed on art schools.
The first problem was to a certain extent solved — other than
by the flight of young people to art schools in Paris and
Munich — through an expansion of the number of private
schools and workshops in Russia (including "workshops
without a supervisor"), where new methods of art education
began to evolve. To the second problem there was for the time
being no solution. Those artistic-and-industrial schools that
existed in Russia were oriented entirely toward manual,
artisanal methods in the fabrication of everyday objects, in
283
printing, and so forth, and failed to react at all to progress in
industry.
The Moscow Vkhutemas came into being as a consequence of
the reform of art education introduced in Russia immediately
after the October Revolution. The reform was carried out in
two stages. The first, in 1918, entailed the abolition of the
academic system: the Academy of Arts and an array of art and
artistic-and-industrial schools and academies in various
Russian cities were put on an equal footing — all were
converted into State Free Art Workshops.2 It was thus that the
First State Free Art Workshops (formerly the Stroganov
Artistic and Industrial School) and the Second State Free Art
Workshops (formerly the School of Painting, Sculpture, and
Architecture) were created in Moscow.
The conversion of the Academy of Arts and other educational
establishments into State Free Art Workshops was no mere
formality; there were material changes. In the majority of the
new institutions priority was given to "pure" art, to painting
above all, and individual workshops were introduced, each
workshop following one or another artist's own program and
methods. The State Free Art Workshops thus endeavored to
replicate the Renaissance studio, where the master worked
amid apprentices and disciples and passed his experience and
artistry on to them. Students were allowed, however, to elect
workshop supervisors and to choose freely with whom to
enroll. Izo Narkompros (the Department of Fine Arts of the
People's Commissariat of Enlightenment) consistently adhered,
moreover, to a policy of equal participation in artistic life for
all movements, and set a quota for them in the workshops.
The State Free Art Workshops opened for classes in the
autumn of 1918; for the first time in its history, art education in
Russia was based on the principles of freedom and democracy
That the new institutions had as many definite shortcomings
as incontestable virtues — both organizationally and
fig. 2
Foreground, display of student work from the space discipline,
Basic Division, Vkhutemas, 1926.
284
pedagogically — gradually became apparent in the two years
that followed.
It was in the State Free Art Workshops that a numbet of
leading artists, primarily members of left movements, began to
create a system of art education derived from the experience of
the new art. As can be ascertained from archival materials, the
programs of Kazimir Malevich, Georgii Iakulov, and Aleksei
Babichev in the First Free State Art Workshops, and of Vasilii
Kandinskii in the Second, were highly innovative. Through the
efforts of these and other artists, new methods were originated
which liberated students from the routine acquisition of
professional skills; the new methods developed students'
powers of perception and gave them the means to fix their
perception in the wealth of artistic forms. Yet, insofar as the
pursuit of primacy in formal discovery and invention (in
general inherent in the avant-garde) continued inside school
walls, there was no broad sharing of educational innovations
among the workshops. There was a danger of creating closed
circles, which would lead to students' merely duplicating the
individual styles of their teachers.
A fair number of instructors, moreover, held to their old
tested methods of teaching. And they were supported by a
large proportion of students who during their previous years of
study in the former schools had become accustomed to a
certain logic in the stale programs and modes of instruction,
and strove to preserve continuity.
As a whole, however, the State Free Art Workshops in
Moscow were, during their two years of operation, a breeding
ground for new initiatives. Avant-garde art continued to
evolve, both within the educational framework and parallel to
it; it assumed new forms. Thus at the exhibitions of Obmokhu
(the Society of Young Artists), a group which had been formed
in 1919 by students at the First State Free Art Workshops,
there were already no Tatlinesque "selections of materials" but
experimental constructions not seen heretofore. (The Obmokhu
exhibition in May 1921 would be recalled as the crucible of
Constructivism.) At the end of 1919, Sinskul'ptarkh (the
Synthesis of Sculpture and Architecture Commission), which
had been under the auspices of Izo Narkompros, was
reorganized into Zhivskul'ptarkh (the Synthesis of Painting,
Sculpture, and Architecture Commission) by young artists and
architects, many of whom were at the time students in the
State Free Art Workshops; it was the first group oriented
toward forms that, consonant with a new phase of artistic
evolution, synthesized the arts. These developments had their
direct continuation inside a new educational institution on
whose fate they exercised a substantial influence: Vkhutemas,
which came into being when the First and Second State Free
Art Workshops were merged in 1920.
The creation of Vkhutemas belongs to the second stage of
the reform of art education, when educational institutions
everywhere underwent consolidation. The reasons for this
action were various;' two deserve mention. First, students had
by this time become dissatisfied with the workshops' lack of
clearly delineated programs and with a system that led to the
mass production of "little Konchalovskiis" and "little Tatlins."4
Second, among avant-garde artists, notions of the objectivity of
formal laws were gaining more and more ground, leaving it
clear that objective methods should be made the general basis
of art education.
The Decree of the Council of People's Commissars on the
Moscow Higher State Artistic-Technical Workshops was
ratified on November 29, 1920, and signed by Lenin on
December 18th. It is symptomatic that the decree was silent on
the graduation of "pure" artists, traditionally the chief aim of
art education; that is, unlike the State Free Art Workshops,
Vkhutemas tilted from its inception in favor of an artistic-and-
fig-3
Workshop in the Woodworking Faculty, Vkhutein, 1928.
Photograph Aleksandr Rodchenko.
285
technical education. The decree also set out the structure of
Vkhutemas. It would have eight faculties — Architecture,
Painting, Sculpture, Graphics, Textiles, Ceramics,
Woodworking, and Metalworking — for each of which a
preparatory (or basic) division was envisioned.
The history of Vkhutemas/Vkhutein5 falls rather neatly into
three basic periods, each corresponding to the tenure of one of
its three rectors. The principal conflicts and many of the
personnel changes at Vkhutemas were in one way or another,
directly or more often indirectly, linked to the issue of
Vkhutemas 's orientation. The chief battles were fought over
whether that orientation should be toward "pure" or
production art.
Insofar as it is possible to characterize each of these periods
succinctly and schematically, the sculptor Efim Ravdel's term
as rector (1920—23) can be labeled the period in which
Vkhutemas 's pedagogical methods (its so-called distsipliny, or
disciplines) were formulated and its eight faculties, with a
preparatory course (offered in the Basic Division) common to
all, put in place. Ravdel's term also witnessed the rise of
Productivist tendencies (which, though they had been
mentioned in the 1920 decree, had then yet to take root),
culminating in the transfer of a number of left artists of a
Constructivist orientation from the preparatory-course
workshops to the production faculties.
Vladimir Favorskii, who served as rector during 1923-26,
presided over the most fruitful and harmonious period in the
history of Vkhutemas. In these years, its structure attained its
final form. The preparatory Basic Course — where the formal-
analytical disciplines had first been employed and which had
originally been developed as an introduction to architecture
and non-objective painting and later oriented toward
production art — was rethought and adapted to encompass all
varieties of artistic work, to the point of including the
principles of Realist figurative art in its teaching. The Basic
Course became, that is, the universal foundation of art
education. An effort was likewise made to regulate and
systematize the programs of Vkhutemas 's faculties. During this
period, moreover, "easel art" and production art attained, and
maintained, an equal footing. It was not an artificial
equilibrium, for Favorskii conceived the various fields of art as
a single system, and he endeavored to make this belief the
guiding principle of Vkhutemas.
Favorskii was succeeded in 1926 by Pavel Novitskii, and a
technical preoccupation again came to the fore, accompanied
this time by "sociologizing" tendencies in the fine-arts
faculties. The notion of the formal oneness of all varieties of
art, which had been so diligently nurtured in previous years,
was discarded. The Basic Division, where students of all
specializations were taught the same formal and artistic
principles, was cut back sharply, the length of its course
reduced from two years to six months. The links of each faculty
to the others were considerably weakened. Vkhutein was
splintered into self-contained faculties, each of whose fates was
individually determined — and ceased to exist.
Let us return, however, to the matter of the avant-garde.
Vkhutemas gathered together within its walls the most
prominent representatives of avant-garde trends of the 1910s. A
number of these artists — Aleksandr Shevchenko, Anna
Golubkina, Aleksandr Drevin, Kandinskii, Petr Konchalovskii,
Boris Korolev, Pavel Kuznetsov, Aristarkh Lentulov, Il'ia
Mashkov, and Robert Fal'k, among others — were given their
own workshops in the Painting and Sculpture faculties.
Others — Vladimir Baranov-Rossine, Nadezhda Udal'tsova,
Ivan Kliun, Aleksandr Vesnin, Liubov1 Popova, Aleksandr
Rodchenko, Aleksandra Ekster, and Aleksandr Os'merkin —
received workshops in the Basic Division.
fig- 4
Baskov
Student work from the color discipline, Basic Division, Vkhutemas.
286
Throughout all the organizational changes and fluctuations
in policy at Vkhutemas/Vkhutein, the workshops in the
Painting Faculty preserved as best they could their character —
acquired back in the days of the State Free Art Workshops — as
self-sufficient studios centered about one master artist. They
were an embodiment of the avant-garde cult of the artist as
demiurge, of the absolute creative personality. The influence of
these artist-teachers on their students can be discerned in the
stylistic tendencies of later Soviet painting; distinct trends can
be traced to students of Shevchenko, Fal'k, Kuznetsov,
Konstantin Istomin, and others. There was, of course, no hard
and fast correlation between such influence and a teacher's
originality. David Shterenberg's students, for example, showed
no discernible signs of his influence. (It is no coincidence that
it was in Shterenberg's workshop that the student Aaron
Rzheznikov organized, as was allowed under workshop rules, a
"workshop without a supervisor" at the end of the 1920s.)
Not only the subjective and individual but the objective and
universal — that is, both halves of the fundamental avant-garde
antithesis — came into play at Vkhutemas. Even in its earliest
stages, formal experimentation by the avant-garde took on the
features of a scientific inquiry. Spontaneous self-expression,
both in the work of a single avant-garde artist and in the self-
reflexion of a group of artists, was constantly conjoined and
intertwined with attempts to formulate objective laws of
perception and form. The work of Kandinskii is without
question the best example of this conjunction of the subjective
and objective.
Kandinskii was at the forefront of the Russian avant-garde's
artistic science, having organized Inkhuk (the Institute of
Artistic Culture) in 1920 precisely for the conduct of objective
investigations into the elements of art. Kandinskii drew up a
research program for Inkhuk and initiated its implementation;
shortly afterward, however, disagreements arose; Kandinskii
departed, and Inkhuk followed a somewhat different course
from that mapped by him. There is not space here to examine
in detail the work and interaction of those affiliated with
Inkhuk. Suffice it to emphasize Kandinskii's indisputable
influence on an array of artists who would seem to have
rejected his conceptions and methods. Certain of those artists
were teachers at Vkhutemas. (The research at Inkhuk and the
work of Vkhutemas were tightly interwoven.)
The work done at Vkhutemas testifies, above all, to the
avant-garde's love of theorizing. The impulse to theorize —
which at earlier stages (and in other social and cultural
conditions) had found an outlet in manifestos and pamphlets
and in oral, colloquial forms — now, at the beginning of the
1920s, was funneled into scientific papers (at Inkhuk) and
academic programs (at Vkhutemas; at GVTM {the Higher
State Theater Workshops], organized by Vsevolod Meierkhol'd;
and elsewhere). Creative work — reflections on artists'
individual and group evolution — continued to be the stuff of
these new (to artists) genres of theorizing.
By this time, of course, theories had been advanced in some
quantity by art critics and historians. Nikolai Tarabukin (also a
member of Inkhuk) had already written his Opyt teorii zbivopisi
(Toward a Theory of Painting, 1916), in which he defined the
study of the history of art as the "analysis of the elements of
artistic creations."6 During the same period, Nikolai Punin's
examination of contemporary tendencies in art had led him to a
variant of the formal-analytical theory of art. Punin had also
played a crucial role in defining the concept of "artistic
culture," the theoretical underpinning of the measures enacted
by the Petrograd Izo Narkompros in the immediate
postrevolutionary period.7 "Artistic culture" was a notion
derived by theorists of the Russian avant-garde from the actual
practice of new artistic trends. The values of "artistic culture"
fig- 5
Petr Galaktionov with his diploma project: furnishings for a movie
theater, Vkhutein, ip2p.
fig. 6
Students in Lavinskii's workshop building a model of a rural reading
room for display at the Exposition internationale des arts
decoratifs et industriels modernes, 192$.
287
were defined as purely professional ones, the product of the
"sustained artistic labor" of various schools.
At the beginning of the 1920s, analysis — isolating among
the wide range of professional artistic means and devices those
of chief importance to a given movement, and making them
absolutes in artistic work — became the chief method of the
new art scholarship, as well as the organizing principle of
artistic life — of exhibitions, museums, and art education.
Describing his plans for the Museum of Painterly Culture,
Kandinskii wrote in 1920: "It will collect experiments in
formal construction according to the principle of juxtaposition:
color planes and linear planes; the alignment, collision, and
resolution of planes; the relation of surface-plane and volume;
treatment of surface-plane and volume as self-sufficient
elements; the coincidence or disconnection of linear and
painterly planes and volumes; experiments in the creation of
purely volumetric forms, both unitary and combinational, and
so forth."8 It was certainly under the influence of these
conceptions of Kandinskii's — though already in his absence —
that Babichev and Popova evolved their research programs in
the Monumental Art Section of the Working Group of
Objective Analysis at Inkhuk. The same conceptions lay at the
heart of the system of disciplines in the Basic Division of
Vkhutemas — whose most active creator and coordinator was,
again, Popova.
For Kandinskii, analytical work was merely an interim stage
in the quest for synthesis, or, in his terminology, "monumental
art." For members of the Objective Analysis Section at Inkhuk
and for teachers in Vkhutemas 's Basic Division in 1921-22,
however, analytical work was no mere sideline or auxiliary
stage but an artistic and theoretical value in its own right. For
them, moreover, the synthesis of formal and analytical
experimentation — when they spoke of synthesis — was not
Kandinskii's "monumental art" but production art, a
specifically Russian offspring of the analytical stage in the
evolution of the avant-garde. This bears on the fate of the Basic
Division in Vkhutemas 's first period and of those production
faculties which came under the influence of Rodchenko's
group.
At Vkhutemas, it was Favorskii's policy, followed in 1923—26,
which, in its conception of the unity of the arts and its support
for the work of art as an integrated and finished expression of
artistic reality, was kindred with the ideas of Kandinskii. There
were, of course, critical discrepancies between Kandinskii's
understanding of these matters and their interpretation by
Favorskii's adherents. Thus, whereas Kandinskii sought to
study the laws of artistry as a whole, embracing both the
spatial and the temporal arts, Vkhutemas confined itself
strictly to the spatial arts.
In the clash between the Constructivism of the Productivists
and Favorskii's synthesizing, two principles of the Russian
avant-garde — the mechanical and the organic, respectively —
collided. (Although somewhat later, in the latter half of the
1920s, Petr Miturich, in the Printing Trades Faculty [as the
Graphics Faculty had been renamed], rebelled against
Favorskii's methods as mechanistic from the point of view of
free artistic intuition.)9
The notion of the oneness of the formal laws of all the spatial
BXvTeMh
rOCYAAPCTBEHHUH
yAOHfECTBEHHO-
fig- 7
Aleksandr Rodchenko
Design for a signboard for Vkhutemas, 1924.
fig. 8
Cover for Vkhutein prospectus, 1929.
288
arts was the cornerstone of Vkhutemas's educational system
and united proponents of diverse trends. Zhivskul'ptarkh had
been the first to experiment in promoting this unity — prior to
the establishment of Vkhutemas. Its exhibitions were
noteworthy not merely for joining architects, painters, and
sculptors in one show but for their astonishing blending of art
forms. The painters Rodchenko and Shevchenko, the sculptor
Korolev, the architects Nikolai Ladovskii and Vladimir
Krinskii, and others exhibited works belonging to one and the
same nontraditional genre: fantastic architectural projects for
"houses of Soviets," kiosks, communal housing, and so on.
These "paper projects," executed in the Cubo-Futurist painting
style of the era, were presented more as "easel art" than
traditional architectural production. They bore witness to the
organic unity of formal conceptions held by representatives of
different fields of art; to the significance, at that moment, of
formal experimentation in painting for all types of art; and to
the importance of space as the material and constructive
principle of form — not just for architects and sculptors but also
for painters, who had not turned merely by chance to creating
architectural projects on paper.
Joining forces in Vkhutemas's Basic Course, Rodchenko,
Popova, Anton Lavinskii, Vladimir Khrakovskii, Viktor
Kiselev, Korolev, Ladovskii, and Krinskii — painters, sculptors,
and architects — fashioned teaching methods based on their
shared conceptions. In 1920, Ladovskii independently worked
out "psychoanalytical" methods in the Obmas (the United
Workshops of the Architecture Faculty). In 1920-21, an effort
was made in the Basic Division to assign successive phases in
the study of form in painting to separate workshops: "color"
would be studied in certain of them, "volume in painting" in
others, "construction" in yet others, and so on. At that time,
Popova and Vesnin's workshop, for instance, was labeled
"Discipline No. 1: Color." These first analytical endeavors were,
however, still very imprecise.
During the next stage (1922-23), the artists worked at
systematizing programs and student work, having added
"volumetric" and "spatial" disciplines to the "painterly." The
task of integrating the new disciplines into the training of
students of all specializations was taken up by the architects
Ladovskii and Krinskii.
As this effort proceeded, the aim of the Basic Course
changed. Initially, when they created their introductory
program — the analytical or, as they were also called,
"objective" disciplines — the teachers of the Painting and
Sculpture faculties had seen their goal as the training of "easel
artists," of non-objective artists. During 1921-23, the notion of
production art — whose forms were typically refutations of
"pure" art — came to the fore and gathered momentum in
vanguard circles. By late 1922-early 1923, a new preparatory
course had been conceived; it was based on the analytical study
of form according to a clear-cut logic — from surface-planarity
through volume to space — and was intended to foster
production artists.
A group composed of Rodchenko, Aleksandr Vesnin,
Lavinskii, and Popova presented Vkhutemas's directors with a
plan (of Popova's design) to convert the Basic Division into a
design faculty with a two-year introductory program and a
two-year course in production art — production art at that
moment being conceived to include street and interior
decoration, industrial graphics, clothing design, and so forth.
It was a plan, that is, to prepare students for the very same
work that the Constructivists-Productivists were turning to at
the time. But the plan was rejected and never put into effect.
Rodchenko, Lavinskii, and Kiselev — all now Productivists —
moved to the Metalworking and Woodworking faculties and
there began instituting changes, replacing old received notions
fig- 9
Students in Rodchenko s workshop, Vkhutemas, 1924.
289
of applied art with new Constructivist tenets. Popova had
started teaching at GVTM under Meierkhol'd in 1921, and in
1923 left Vkhutemas.
Conflicts between the Productivists and the partisans of
traditional artistic forms were a hallmark of the years 1923-24.
While the Constructivists-Productivists — also known as the
"Productivists from Lef [the Left Front of the Arts]" — resolved
the "easel versus production" impasse unequivocally in favor of
production art, Favorskii and his sympathizers — Nikolai
Dokuchaev, Istomin, Pavel Pavlinov, and certain others — saw
the matter differently.
Favorskii, whom the "Productivists from Lef had trouble
putting their finger on (was he an "easel painter," "applied
artist," or "Productivist mystic"?),'0 by and large erased the
distinction between the two areas of creation. According to
Favorskii 's theory, the evolution of form proceeded from
surface-planarity through volume to space — in the same
sequence, that is, as was followed in the courses of the Basic
Division. Once he became Vkhutemas 's rector in 1923,
Favorskii aspired not only to shore up advances already made in
the Basic Division and to make the preparatory course
compulsory and profitable for students in all faculties but to
extend the logic of the formal disciplines to Vkhutemas 's
structure and methods as a whole. Favorskii's theoretical views
relied both on the traditions of European Formalism and on
direct analysis of avant-garde art and the practices of Russian
artists, his Vkhutemas colleagues included. The Productivists,
nonetheless, did not view Favorskii as one of their own.
In the middle and late 1920s, Constructivist tendencies were
strong in the Metalworking Faculty, where Rodchenko and
Tatlin were teachers; in the Woodworking Faculty, where
Lissitzky had been teaching since his return from Europe; and
in the Textile Faculty — there the result of Varvara Stepanova's
influence. In the Architecture Faculty, traditionalists,
Formalists (Ladovskii and his colleagues), and Constructivists
(the Vesnins and their followers) all battled for influence. The
Formalists' theoretical and artistic orientation came closest to
Favorskii's conceptions, though Favorskii was not reckoned, as
were the Formalists, among the innovators.
More and more painters who had once belonged to the avant-
garde — members of Bubnovyi valet (Jack of Diamonds),
including Mashkov, Lentulov, and Konchalovskii; and artists of
Orientalist and Primitivist allegiances — were flocking to
traditionalism by this time. Their evolution led them further
and further away from formal and artistic experimentation. As
a result, they strove in their teaching practices as well to keep
to the model of the turn-of-the-century Parisian studio — and
one of a moderate bent at that.
In mid-decade, it was in the Basic Division and the Printing
Trades Faculty that the formal and analytical methods created
by non-objective artists in 1920-23 were adhered to most
closely and consistently. They were employed by, among
others, Istomin, Pavlinov, Khrakovskii, the sculptors Nina
Niss-Gol'dman and Romual'd Iodko, and the architects
(students of Ladovskii s) Viktor Balikhin, Mikhail Turkus,
Mikhail Korzhev, and Ivan Lamtsov. Yet, while in the Basic
Division attitudes toward these methods remained unchanged
over the entire decade, members of the specialized faculties
complained more than once that they amounted to an
unnecessary academic exercise, a waste of students' time.
Toward the end of the 1920s, as mentioned earlier, Vkhutein
witnessed a growing technical preoccupation, a tendency to, as
Favorskii put it, "play engineer." The finely adjusted balance
between artistic and technical disciplines in the education of
designers (graphic artists, furniture designers, textile designers,
ceramists, and so forth) and of architects was targeted for
change, at the expense of the formal artistic disciplines. In the
fig. 10
Aleksandr Deineka
Vkhutemas, illustration for Revolutionary Moscow, 1921. The
album was distributed among delegates to the Third Congress of the
Comintern.
290
training of "pure" artists (painters and sculptors), more and
more attention was paid not to professional but to ideological
requirements. It was Novitskii — a theorist and member of
October, one of the last left groups in Soviet art — who presided
over the adoption of technical and "sociologizing" approaches
to art. His disposition toward sociologizing was shared by such
"right" groups as OMAKhR (the Young People's Section of the
Association of Artists of the Revolution), whose ranks included
students at Vkhutein.
The pitched battle among artists' groups in the middle and
late 1920s drew in a large number of Vkhutemas/Vkhutein's
teachers and students. The most influential groups, apart from
October and AKhRR (the Association of Artists of
Revolutionary Russia; from 1928 the Association of Artists of
the Revolution, or AKhR), were Ost (the Society of Easel
Painters) — whose members included both
Vkhutemas/Vkhutein teachers (Shterenberg and Nikolai
Kupreianov) and graduates (such as Andrei Goncharov, Iurii
Pimenov, Aleksandr Deineka, and Petr Vil'iams) — and Four
Arts, an association that brought together diverse, chiefly
middle-aged artists, many of whom taught at the school
(Favorskii, Istomin, Miturich, Kuznetsov, Vera Mukhina, Ivan
Zholtovskii, and others).
The October group stood for the avant-garde's movement
into production. The members of AKhRR, among whom were
many solidly left artists of the 1910s (such as Lentulov and
Mashkov), were apostates who renounced the avant-garde
entirely. The young artists of Ost adapted the avant-garde
legacy to easel painting and figuration (it is here, perhaps, that
the legacy of Vkhutemas is most pronounced). And Four Arts
sought to preserve artistic culture in conditions of increasing
ideological pressure. (Yet, while many artists of this group
were at home with the latest innovations, they perceived them
solely in the context of the centuries-long evolution of art.)
A tendency to fall back on tradition had existed at
Vkhutemas alongside the enthusiasm for innovation inherited
from the avant-garde of the 1910s. And although the study of
traditions and history (of professional trades, art forms, and
artistic trends and schools) was not put forward as the chief
method of art education — as it had been, for example, at the
former Stroganov School (everything there was based on a
thorough study of styles) or in the architecture department of
the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture —
it did, after a certain struggle, find a place in the programs of
various faculties. That it did is not solely a measure of the
influence of purely traditionalist tendencies having no relation
whatsoever to the avant-garde; it is also an index of the avant-
garde's own attention to history. For when they turned to the
theorization of vanguard trends in art and to the creation of
educational systems and teaching methods, Malevich, Moisei
Ginzburg, Popova and her colleagues at Inkhuk, and other
artists traced the historical evolution of art with great care,
uncovering the "additional element" (Malevich's famous term)
in each new movement. They sought to organize exhibitions in
the new museums of painterly or artistic culture according to
the same evolutionary outline.
It should be recalled that in 1923 Moscow's Museum of
Painterly Culture moved to one of the Vkhutemas buildings at
11 Rozhdestvenka (previously the site of the Stroganov School).
Rodchenko had been the museum's director in 1920—22;
Vil'iams and Lazar1 Vainer administered it, and Solomon
Nikritin headed its Research Board, in later years (all were
Vkhutemas graduates). There Nikritin applied the method of
formal analysis to the study of masterpieces of the past and
endeavored to find exact and reliable mathematical formulas
for the older artists' work. In 1925, the museum was the site of
the survey exhibition Levye techeniia v russkoi zhivopisi za 15 let
fig. 11
The former Vkhutemas building on Kirov Street, 1976.
Photograph Aleksandr Lavrent'ev.
291
m
VOKk
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BbIA B 9TON! AOi,
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BblCl HI 'X X VHO^KECTBEI-ifibr
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fig. 12
Serge/' Sew !&i#
Tablet for the former Vkhutemas building commemorating Lenin's
visit to the school on February 2$, ip2i; first version, 1960s.
{Left Trends in Russian Painting over the Past Fifteen Years).
But, of course, what linked Vkhutemas to the avant-garde
above all and made it, for all the twists and turns in its
orientation and history, a center of the avant-garde was the
spirit of invention and experimentation which prevailed in the
majority of its classrooms and workshops. The production
faculties, under the guidance of such leading artist-
constructors as Rodchenko, Tatlin, Lissitzky, and Stepanova,
were a major site of innovation. Two vanguard movements —
Constructivism and Rationalism — took shape in the
Architecture Faculty. (Graduates of the Architecture Faculty
included such major figures as Ivan Leonidov.)
But while unconcealed and programmatic innovation in
architecture and design flourished at Vkhutemas, and was
difficult to oppose, the situation in the Printing Trades Faculty
was not so straightforward. Students in that faculty practiced
Constructivist-style innovations, based on exploitation of the
possibilities of typographical techniques, yet these innovations
occurred outside rather than within the classroom, where
formal mastery, achieved via the study of traditional techniques
and devices, was wanted. Once students had acquired those
skills, however, they incorporated in their work lessons learned
from Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Gustav Klutsis, and other artists,
who may not have been teachers in the Printing Trades Faculty
but were continually at the center of students' attention. The
vanguard artists' influence showed itself constantly, in both the
students' assigned and their elective work.
By virtue of its concentrated atmosphere of exploration and
innovation, Vkhutemas was for many years the site of diverse
artistic undertakings. Among them were the Workshop of the
Revolution — an attempt to translate the energy of the avant-
garde into agitational forms — that Sergei Sen'kin, Klutsis, and
others made plans to organize in 1924. A Projectionist Theater,
an experiment by Nikolai Triaskin, Sergei Luchishkin, and
Nikritin with Abstractionism in the theater, offered
performances in 1923 and 1924. And the overwhelming
majority of the participants in the Pervaia diskussionnaia
vystavka ob "edinenii aktivnogo revoliutsionnogo iskusstva {First
Discussional Exhibition of Associations of Active Revolutionary Art,
Moscow, 1924), held in an exhibition space belonging to
Vkhutemas, had connections to the school; they were teachers,
students, or recent graduates.
What, then, was the role played by Vkhutemas in the history
of the Russian avant-garde? Before attempting an answer, one
should recall that Vkhutemas came into being when the avant-
garde movement was already waning (its peak, of course, came
in the mid- to late 1910s). Vkhutemas, by assembling vanguard
artists to be its teachers, became a repository of the spirit of the
avant-garde. And it met the avant-garde's quest for its own
educational institution and teaching methods — methods which
the avant-garde was obliged to create, because the values it
championed were professional values.
With the adoption of the formal-analytical studies and
synthesizing ideas of the avant-garde into art education, these
values became an integral part of the artistic consciousness of
Vkhutemas 's graduates. And of succeeding generations.
Because graduates of Vkhutemas became teachers in Moscow's
institutions of higher education; the ideas and formal
discoveries of the Russian avant-garde — which had become the
ideas and practices of Vkhutemas — were part of the
consciousness of young artists of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
(Nor have these ideas lost their significance for art today.)
Vkhutemas 's introduction of the values of avant-garde art into
artistic culture as a whole was, without question, its greatest
achievement.
-Translated, from the Russian, by Jane Bobko
292
Notes
i. Thus far, research on Vkhutemas has been scattered
throughout a large number of articles. The principal studies are
those of R. Antonov, A. Lavrent'ev, S. O. Khan-Magomedov,
and this author in the journal Tekhnicheskaia estetika and the
Tekhnicheskaia estetika series of the Trudy VNIITE (nos. 28, 34,
and 41 are the most pertinent). Khan-Magomedov 's
VHUTEMAS. Moscou, 1920-1930, trans. Joe'lle Aubert-Yong,
Nikita Krivocheine, and Jean-Claude Marcade, 2 vols. (Paris:
Editions du Regard, 1990) has recently appeared, and a volume
entitled Vkhutemas — Vkhutein. 1920-1930 is forthcoming from
Sovetskii khudozhnik. There is reason to hope that the gaps in
our knowledge of Vkhutemas will soon be filled.
2. The entire conversion was overseen by Narkompros, which at
that time counted many leading artists among its members,
most of them adherents of the left (Cubo-Futurists, non-
objective artists, and Suprematists) or center (Cezannists,
Orientalists, and Primitivists).
3. Narkompros 's limited resources for the upkeep of educational
institutions were one of the reasons. Nonetheless, the creation
of Vkhutemas via the consolidation of the State Free Art
Workshops is highly reminiscent of the measures adopted in a
number of European countries in the 1900s and 1910s, when the
demands of industrial development were met by merging
academies of fine arts and schools of applied arts into a new type
of art school.
4. The unhappy students once hung a placard in the First State
Free Art Workshops' entryway, on which they had written:
"Down with the titanic Picassos and Gauguins! It's enough to
mass-produce Tatlins, Konchalovskiis, Fedorovskiis,
Os'merkins, Lentulovs . . ." (the list continued through all the
teachers' names).
5. Vkhutemas was renamed Vkhutein (the Higher Artistic-
Technical Institute) in 1927.
6. N. Tarabukin, Opyt teorii zhtvopisi (Moscow: Proletkul't, 1923),
p. 6. The book was written in 1916.
7. The statute of the Department of Fine Arts and Artistic
Industry on "artistic culture" was published in Iski/sstvo
kommuny, February 16, 1919. For a detailed discussion of this
concept, see Svetlana Dzhafarova, "The Creation of the Museum
of Painterly Culture," in this volume.
8. V Kandinskii, "Muzei zhivopisnoi kul'tury,"
Kbudozhestvennaia zhizn' 2 (1920), p. 20.
9. See N. Adaskina, "Iz istorii poligraffaka Vkhutemasa
(Ob"ektivno-analiticheskie i tvorcheski-lichnostnye nachala
khudozhestvennoi pedagogiki)," in Sovremennyi dizain i naslcdie
Vkhutemasa, Trudy VNIITE, vyp. 34 (Moscow: Vsesoiuznyi
naucho-issledovatel'skii institut tekhnicheskoi estetiki, 1982).
10. L<?/2(i923), p. 174.
293
UofixiXL
V^oyuuwAoo
rtoc^csjniA ^ya^juo. J\VV( j*j
fig. i
Page from Rodchenko's notebook with sketch
for cover for Linear ism, ip20.
A. M. Rodchenko and V. F. Stepanova
Archive, Moscow.
294
What Is Linearism?
Aleksandr Lavrent 'ev
The term Linearism (liniizm) and the conception of painting it
denoted were the invention of Aleksandt Rodchenko, who
wrote at the end of 1919:
LINEARISM is a new tendency in non-objective creative work.
The surface plane is, logically, being discarded, and so as to express
greater constructedness, architecturalness in compositions — and there
being no further need for it — that old favorite of paintings, faktura
{density}, is being discarded, too.'
It is legitimate to wonder to what purpose it behooved him to
"discard," "discover," and issue declarations if the sole result
was a handful of colored or white lines drawn with a brush over
a black or colored ground. Rodchenko's own writings will
provide the best answer.
The history of the Russian avant-garde in the 1910s and
1920s witnessed several fundamental discoveries about form in
painting: the intersecting non-objective brush strokes,
resembling the patterns of frost on glass, of Mikhail Larionov,
promulgator of Rayism; the Chernyi kvadrat (Black Square, 1915)
of Kazimir Malevich, inaugurator of Suprematism; the counter-
reliefs of Vladimir Tatlin, fashioned from real rather than
trompe l'oeil fragments of iron, wood, glass, and wire. One
might say that the last links in this chain, in which Liubov'
Popova's "painterly architectonics" also figured, were the
inventive semi-engineered constructions of Georgii and
Vladimir Stenberg and of Karl Ioganson — and two cycles by
Rodchenko: the first, his paintings and graphic works
composed of lines and points, and the second, three
monochromatic canvases in which the surface of the painting
had already crossed into the category of object. "Everything is
finished. Primary colors. Each plane is a plane and there need
be no representations."2 A red, a yellow, and a blue canvas —
these are no longer constructions, not compositions; they are
the end stage of the experimentation of an extreme innovator.
Who saw a WALL . . .
Who saw JUST A SURFACE PLANE
EVERYONE . . . AND NO ONE.
One who had truly seen came and simply showed
the square
This means opening eyes to the surface plane. '
Thus is Malevich described in "Kto my?" ("Who Are
We?"), the manifesto of the Constructivists written by
Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova in 1921-22. With his Black
Square, Malevich showed the surface plane to be a reality in
painting and a category of visual thinking.
And when in his laboratory one person set up
the square,
His radio reached all whom it behooved and whom it did not, then
soon, on all the "ships of left art" sailing under white, black, and red
flags . . . everything utterly, utterly everything was covered with
squares.4
Rodchenko's investigations into and analyses of non-
objective creation brought him to this necessity: the
declaration of the line as the basis for modeling. "A new
apprehension of the world," he noted, "has been elucidated in
the line."5
Who saw an angle,
Who saw a framework, a plan?
EVERYONE . . . AND NO ONE.
One who had truly seen came and simply SHOWED
the line
295
And when yesterday in his laboratory one person set up the
line, the grid, and the point,
His radio reached all whom it behooved and whom it did not, then
soon, and especially on all the "ships of left art" newly christened
"Constructivist, " sailing under diverse flags . . . everything utterly . .
. utterly is being constructed of lines and grids.
OF COURSE, the square existed even previously, the line and the grid
existed previously.
Which is the crux.
Just this THEY POINTED THEM OUT
THEY PROCLAIMED THEM.
The square — 191$, Malevich's laboratory.
The line, the grid, the point — ipip, Rodchenko's laboratory.6
No one, it may be, wrote about experimentation and the
laboratories of art with as much ardor as Rodchenko. And his
attitude toward art always embraced a desire to affirm his pride
of place, to "patent" the uniqueness and innovation of his every
new series. In a draft "auto-monograph," Rodchenko
enumerated the innovatory services he had rendered, among
them that "I introduced and proclaimed the line as an element
of construction and as an independent form in painting."7
As a painter, Rodchenko existed within the philosophical
space of "left" painting and was connected to other artists by
numerous personal and creative threads. His work is, in
addition to all else, a reaction to what had happened and was
happening in painting during 1917-21. Yet, as an extreme
innovator and inventor, Rodchenko was sui generis, and his
work should be appraised according to his own criteria of
innovation, originality, technical mastery, and economy of
expressive means. He himself was cognizant of the obstacles
should his work be viewed from the vantage of different
requirements, criteria, or positions. By the very existence of all
those lines and circles painted on canvas, he laid down a new
criterion of judgment.
It should be recalled that Rodchenko had announced two
previous conceptions of painting — "dynamism of the plane"
(constructed conjunctions of planes intersecting in space) and
"concentration of color and form" (compositions of floating,
gleaming colored spheres) — in works he displayed at his first
solo exhibition (Moscow, 1918), the Fifth State Exhibition
(Moscow, 1919), and the Tenth State Exhibition, Bespredmetnoe
tvorchestvo i suprematizm (Non-Objective Creation and Suprematism,
Moscow, 1919). Rodchenko conceived his new series, consisting
solely of lines, in August 1919, in advance of the Tenth State
Exhibition. Yet, though he had completed a number of the
new works, Rodchenko did not exhibit them. In order to
proclaim a new movement in non-objective painting, one or
two works would not suffice; an entire cycle was needed, whose
size and compositional variety would confirm the movement as
a new artistic program.
"I revealed the composition and the tying-together of the
canvas by means of it," Rodchenko wrote in his working notes.8
By the "tying-together of the canvas" he meant the filling-up
of the surface plane, of space. In each work, lines — on one or
another colored ground; wide, with shaded edges, or crisp and
narrow — form one or another configuration, representing, as it
were, some event in the life of lines. Now they meet and
intersect like two streaks of cloud; now, at the point of
intersection, one line suddenly shoots upward and blossoms
into filaments; now the lines turn on a central pivot and
expand into space according to the principle of a hyperbolically
contracted surface plane. Straight lines create a stable
framework; concentric closed curves recall the trajectory of
points. Ordinary lines, it turns out, can be animated just like
any other form — and no less than the point.
/ am thinking of painting several circles for Linearism and also of
making a linear sculpture.
I think I'll exhibit Linearism in June or July, when there'll be no
fewer than 30 works in oil, and maybe even 50, for I've got 75. / must
also write and print up $00 copies of a booklet on Linearism.9
Rodchenko indeed intended to construct a linear sculpture
from wire, and had even accumulated a store of small steel
rods. But he was forced to abandon the venture, inasmuch as it
would have been a technically more demanding undertaking
than was his work with cardboard, paper, or oils (which were
always close at hand). Welding, or at the very least soldering,
would have been entailed. At the time, not only the technical
wherewithal but even space in which to work was hard to come
by (Rodchenko and Stepanova were then living in the quarters
of the Museum of Painterly Culture, where Rodchenko served
as director).
A mountain of work, but I'm quite drained by my duties and the
exertion it now takes to feed ourselves.
I'm resting my hopes on summer and the warmth of the Sun."
It was only at the Nineteenth State Exhibition (Moscow,
1920) that Rodchenko's "lines" were exhibited. The series
included paintings (some twenty of them) and graphic works,
as well as the text "Vse— opyty" ("Everything Is Experiment"),
whose typewritten pages were mounted on a wall. The text
explained why Rodchenko did not repeat his previous
experiments, why each time he fashioned an ever newer series
from new formal elements. His every cycle constituted a
certain new possibility, a certain new world, albeit one
consisting of planes, colored spheres, or lines. Rodchenko
would later effect the same admixture of means, devices, and
formal elements (circles, planes, and lines) in other areas — in
architecture, design, graphics, and advertising.
It is useful to view Rodchenko in the company of other
avant-garde artists, that is, in the same context in which his
works were displayed at the celebrated Tenth State Exhibition,
the Nineteenth State Exhibition, and $ x $ = 2j (Moscow, 1921),
at which last Rodchenko's three monochromatic canvases were
shown. When Rodchenko is thus positioned amid his
colleagues, the principal elements of his system and his
uniqueness are thrown into sharper relief. One can profit anew
from the bit of advice offered by Rodchenko in "Everything Is
Experiment":
In each work, I conduct a new experiment without the advantage of
my past, and in each work I set a different task. If you survey my
entire output over all this time, you will find one enormous and
completely new work. If you want to tack the past on to it, get yourself
to a museum and contemplate that. "
— Translated, from the Russian, by Jane Bobko
296
Notes
i. A. M. Rodchenko, notebook, 1917-20, A. M. Rodchenko and
V. F. Stepanova Archive, Moscow.
2. A. M. Rodchenko, "Rabota s Maiakovskim," 1939,
A. M. Rodchenko and V. F. Stepanova Archive, Moscow.
Published in part in A. M. Rodchenko. Stat'i, vospominaniia,
avtobiograficheskie zapiski, pis'ma (Moscow: Sovetskii
khudozhnik, 1982), pp. 53-82.
3. A. M. Rodchenko and V. F. Stepanova, "Kto my?," 1921-22,
A. M. Rodchenko and V. F. Stepanova Archive, Moscow.
Published in Aleksandr M. Rodchenko-Varvara F. Stepanova:
The Future Is Our Only Goal, ed. Peter Noever, trans. Mathew
Frost, Paul Kremmel, and Michael Robinson, catalogue for
exhibition organized by the Osterreichisches Museum fur
angewandte Kunst, Vienna, and the A. S. Pushkin State
Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow (Munich: Prestel, 1991),
pp. 170-72.
4. Rodchenko and Stepanova, "Kto my?"
5. A. M. Rodchenko, "Liniia," 1921, A. M. Rodchenko and
V. F. Stepanova Archive, Moscow.
6. Rodchenko and Stepanova, "Kto my?"
7. A. M. Rodchenko, "Laboratornoe prokhozhdenie cherez
iskusstvo zhivopisi i konstruktivno-prostranstvennye formy
k industrial'noi initsiative konstruktivizma," 1921-22,
A. M. Rodchenko and V. F. Stepanova Archive, Moscow.
8. Rodchenko, notebook, 1917-20.
9. Ibid. The text of "Liniia" ("The Line") was completed in 1921
and reproduced by hectograph at Inkhuk (the Institute of
Artistic Culture) in a small number of copies. Published in
S. O. Khan-Magomedov, Rodchenko: The Complete Work, ed.
Vieri Quilici, trans. Huw Evans (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1987), pp. 292—94; in Art Into Life: Russian Constructivism,
IPI4-IP32, catalogue for exhibition organized by the Henry Art
Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, the Walker Art
Center, Minneapolis, and the State Tret'yakov Gallery, Moscow
(New York: Rizzoli, 1990), pp. 71-73; and in Aleksandr M.
Rodchenko-Varvara F. Stepanova: The Future Is Our Only Goal,
PP- 133—35-
10. Rodchenko, notebook, 1917-20.
11. A. M. Rodchenko, "Vse-opyty," ip2i, A. M. Rodchenko
and V. F. Stepanova Archive, Moscow. Published in Aleksandr
M. Rodchenko-Varvara F. Stepanova: The Future Is Our Only Goal,
pp. 130-32.
297
The Constructivists:
Modernism on the Way
to Modernization
Hubertus Gassner
"In life, mankind is an experiment for the future," Aleksandr
Rodchenko wrote in his "Vse— opyty" ("Everything Is
Experiment," 1921).' Now that this future is already past and
we stand before the shambles of the greatest human
experiment in history, we should take a close look at the
utopianism of the Soviet-Russian avant-garde. In so doing, we
may gain a deeper insight into the channels and links between
formal experiments in art and social experiments with human
life.
The avant-garde's utopianism began not with an
enthusiastic vision of the future but with a rather skeptical
question: How can one be an artist in the Soviet Union of the
1920s? This question — albeit in slightly modified form — is
still relevant today, as is the answer Constructivism tried to
provide. Today the question reads: How can one be an artist
within a media culture?
The illusory (Western) world of mediated mass
communication produced by the art and entertainment
industry was, of course, unknown to the Soviet avant-garde
artists of the 1920s. Yet some of the communication strategies
devised by the Constructivists anticipated today's agony of
reality under the impact of simulation technologies. And for
good reason, since what was happening in Russia before their
eyes and under their feet — or rather, in their eyes and in their
stride — was no less than a preliminary stage of the ongoing
third, mass-media, revolution: it was the second — the
industrial — revolution.
It had been preceded by a two-stage political revolution:
first the bourgeois, democratic revolution in February 1917, and
then the proletarian, Communist revolution in October 1917.
While it is widely believed, predominantly in the West, that
the artistic revolution locked arms with the political revolution
and even operated as its vanguard, this essay will argue — and, I
hope, demonstrate — that even the avant-garde artists of the
left were entirely unprepared when the second wave of the
political revolution hit. Though they were not caught
unawares by the quickened pace of history after the first salvo
in February, the abrupt change of course in October took them
by surprise.
Between the spring and autumn of 1917 there are more
ruptures than there are continuities. It would be wrong to
perceive the course of the political revolution, after its swerve
in direction, as no more than an accelerated continuation of the
initial phase. And during the 1920s there were further twists,
sometimes in such rapid succession that artists occasionally
stumbled in their race to stay abreast of social change.
Struggling to keep pace, the initially united left front of art
began to dissolve. Groups or individual artists split off and
embarked on divergent courses. Others quit the race
altogether. Those who stayed the course ran in clusters, often
with one or another artist or theorist in the lead. Vladimir
Tatlin was perhaps the only solo runner among them.
The following pages will discuss the evolution of both
individuals and groups. Our focus will be on the breaks
between historical stages and on the crises in art, since only a
survey of the uneasy concurrence of developments within art
and outside art can reveal, and offer a basis for evaluating, the
context in which Constructivism' emerged and grew.
The principal stages are:
•The quest for a new artistic identity in the wake of the
February Revolution, and artists' attempts at alliance so as
to assert their role in the new society
•The silence of artists after the October Revolution, their
reluctance to cooperate with the revolutionary government,
and their unenthusiastic alignment with the new rulers to
secure artistic autonomy (1918-19)
298
•The gestation and birth of Constructivism at the juncture
of political revolution and industrial revolution (1920—21)
•The crisis of Constructivism in 1925-26 and the
transformation of the engineer of objects into the "engineer
of the psyche"
To understand the profound shift in consciousness the
avant-garde underwent in the early 1920s, one need only
examine the discussion at Inkhuk (the Institute of Artistic
Culture), of Varvara Stepanova's lecture "O konstruktivizme"
("On Constructivism"). Stepanova's extremely rationalist
discourse on an instrumentalist concept of art survived the
discussion uncontested: "Once purged of aesthetic,
philosophical and religious excrescences, art leaves us its
material foundations, which henceforth will be organized by
intellectual production. The organizing principle is expedient
Constructivism, in which technology and experimental
thinking take the place of aesthetics."2 What was openly and
fiercely disputed was the crucial question of "how today's
artists justify their existence" (Khrakovskii). Thus pressured,
the artists responded with arguments ranging from the
circumspect to the virulent: Boris Arvatov proposed the
"propagandizing" of Russia's still "utopian" industrialization
through Constructivism, in order to establish a basis for a
Constructivist design of the living environment; Georgii and
Vladimir Stenberg polemically executed artists in general:
"They [artists] are good for nothing. They should be treated in
the same way as the Cheka {secret police] treats
counterrevolutionaries." Konstantin Medunetskii's false
confidence ("Art ends with us") was present alongside an
acknowledged sense of tragedy as art declared bankruptcy. For
Arvatov, the "end of culture" had come because industrial
techniques had supplanted cultural techniques. Inasmuch as
artists were "useless to industry and unable to be engineers,"
their position was "tragic."
Given this dire situation, more than twenty artists and
theorists within Inkhuk decided on November 24, 1921, to
relinquish any self-sufficient pursuit of art and to apply
themselves to the production ol useful objects. The
Constructivist theorist Nikolai Tarabukin celebrated this new
development as a historic moment: "For the first time in the
annals of art history, painters have become sensitive
seismographs of future tendencies by, in a radical reorientation,
deliberately rejecting their specific field of work."
This was the moment when Russian Modernism abandoned
all opposition to the modernization of life effected by
industrialization and mass production, and began to assume
the functions of oil and engine in the machinery of progress.
The stated goal was no longer just the reconciliation of
consciousness and machine but the total alignment of human
psychophysical being to machine mechanisms and motions.
Yet if the Constructivists gave up the resistance to self-serving
or profit-oriented technological progress that had until then
characterized Modernism's critical distance from a merely
market-driven modernity, the decision was not made with a
light heart. Nor was the artists' dropping of their ambivalence
about industrial modernization a logical result of developments
within art, as some design historians claim. The evolutionary
paths of Soviet Constructivism, marked by breaks and
historical contingencies, hardly fit the streamlined phylogeny
of industrial design.
Indeed, a closer analysis of Constructivist production art
can show how its manufacturing methods and products contain
a Utopian surplus value that transforms even the individual
utilitarian object into a pars pro toto of a cosmos harmonically
structured by rhythmic movements. This Utopian surplus lends
these objects their aesthetic and ethical value and even bathes
them in an aura of artistic autonomy — precisely the quality the
Constructivists struggled to nullify on their flight into bare
functionalism.
Paradoxes in Organizing Freedom
After the February Revolution
The artistic avant-garde began its limited performance in
Russian history with the struggle for the independence of art
from government interference. During 1917— 18, the politics of
"Futurism" — the period's generic term for all new trends from
post-Cezannism to Suprematism to Tatlin's "culture of
materials" — had been strictly anti-institutional. In the winter
of 1918-19, however, more than a year after the October
Revolution, the first attempts were made to establish the
avant-garde, institutionally and ideologically, as the artistic
spearhead of the Soviet state. This set the stage for the
turbulent misalliance between "Futurists" and Communists —
a story with several chapters that would come to an abrupt end
with the government-ordained dissolution of all rival artists'
groups in 1932
A preliminary chapter in this difficult marriage of
autonomous art with government institutions opened,
however, some time before October 1917. As early as February
of that year, following the overthrow of the czar by the
bourgeois-democratic revolution, the different artists' groups
began to struggle for public influence.
The end of czarism not only gave artists the freedom from
censorship and institutional tutelage they had long desired —
the dictatorial Imperial Academy of Arts was closed, though
not yet dissolved for good, on February 23, 1917 — but offered
them an unrestricted opportunity to form independent unions.
The topic most passionately debated among the groups that
began to emerge in ever increasing numbers, especially in
Petrograd and Moscow, was the freedom of art and the threat
posed to it by proposed new government institutions. In the
course of artists' debates and meetings, the front separating the
"left" avant-garde and the "right wing" was soon clearly
delineated. The rightist spectrum ranged from members of the
Academy, Realists, and Impressionists to the influential
representatives of Mir iskusstva (World of Art). As these
groups struggled for public influence, the area of contention
gradually shifted from artistic rivalries to politics, and the
fight for "true art" degenerated into a quarrel for power that
would rage on throughout the 1920s, often spurring on the
creativity of the artistic factions yet sometimes paralyzing it.
On the initiative of Maksim Gor'kii, fifty leading artists,
writers, actors, and musicians met in his Petrograd apartment
on March 4, 1917, to establish a commission for the
"conservation and regulation of our art institutions and
treasures left unattended after the abolition of the Imperial
Ministry." The most active subsection of this self-proclaimed
Commission for Artistic Affairs — the Department for the
Preservation of Monuments — was headed by Aleksandr Benua
(Alexandre Benois), the traditionalist painter and influential
art critic from the World of Art circle. With Benua and several
other members of his group occupying leading positions, the
Commission was firmly in the hands of conservatives. Other
commissions for the "future development of art in Russia" were
also dominated by World of Art.
At the Commission's March 4th meeting, Benua proposed
the establishment of a Ministry of Fine Arts as an independent
affiliate of the existing Ministry of Education. With the
creation of such an institution, the artistic intelligentsia would
have vested themselves with governmental powers to carry out
their arrogated function as Russia's cultural standard-bearers.
Three days later, on March 7th, during a meeting at the
Petrograd Institute of Art History, Count Zubov put Benua in
299
charge of a commission for the organization of the proposed
ministry. The same day, the press announced the Provisional
Government's approval of the planned ministry. Benua,
Nikolai Rerikh, and Sergei Diaghilev were named as
prospective candidates for the ministerial post.
The "Futurists," who regarded the planned ministry and,
specifically, the hegemonic claims of the World of Art camp as
a threat to their newly gained freedom from government
regimentation, focused their criticism on Benua, who for years
had been feuding with the Cubo-Futurists and the
Suprematists.' But it was not only the "Futurists" who fought
the ministerial aspirations of their old adversary. To prevent
both the establishment of a ministry of fine arts under Benua
and the official appointment of Gor'kii's commission for the
preservation of monuments, representatives of numerous
artists' groups met on March 9 and 10, 1917, at the Academy of
Arts in Petrograd to form a Union of Art Workers
encompassing all fields of art (painting, sculpture, architecture,
literature, theater, and music). The Union's mission was to
preserve the independence of art from the state and to put the
functions assigned to the ministry in artists' hands.
There were 1403 artists in attendance at the Union's
assembly on March 12th in the Mikhailovskii Theater.
According to newspaper reports, the entire artistic community
of Petrograd was present.
Even though the Union's goal was to combine groups of all
artistic directions in one organization so as not only to defend
its members' professional interests but to embark on the
broadly based cultural renewal of Russia, it immediately broke
up into opposing factions. Thus prevented from performing
any practical, efficient work, the Union was finally dissolved in
the summer of 1918. Among its three factions — the "right
bloc," under the informal direction of the poet Fedor Sologub;
the nonpartisan center; and the "left bloc" — the last was in the
minority. Yet the relatively small left group, representing an
equally small vanguard minority in Russian art, managed, as
the result of its vigorous commitment, to get four of its own
on the twelve-member organizing committee in charge of
setting up the Union: the poet Vladimir Maiakovskii (as
representative of the Moscow artists), the painter Natan
Al'tman (as representative of the groups Bubnovyi valet [Jack
of Diamonds] and Soiuz molodezhi {Union of Youth]), the art
critic Nikolai Punin, and the director Vsevolod Meierkhol'd.
To strengthen their influence on the assembly, members of
the left bloc published a declaration — against the planned
ministry and for the freedom of art brought by the February
Revolution — in the Menshevik daily Den' (The Day) and the
Bolshevik Pravda on the day before the meeting: "The
revolution creates freedom. Without freedom there is no art.
Democratic art is possible only in a free democratic republic."
The proclamation was signed by the Freedom for Art
Federation, whose twenty-eight members included Al'tman,
Kseniia Boguslavskaia, Lev Bruni, Vera Ermolaeva, Aleksei
Grishchenko, Aleksei Karev, Nikolai Lapshin, Ivan Puni,
Rodchenko, Eduard Spandikov, Tatlin, Nikolai Tyrsa,
Nadezhda Udal'tsova, the critics Sergei Isakov and Punin, the
writers Bol'shakov and Il'ia Zdanevich, Meierkhol'd, and the
composer Artur Lur'e. Al'tman, Punin, and Zdanevich were
the Federation's secretaries.
On the day of the assembly, the Federation published
another declaration in The Day, this time protesting the
"undemocratic attempts by certain groups to seize control of
cultural life through the establishment of a Ministry of Fine
Arts." The Federation appealed to all artists participating in
the Union's constituent assembly to vote for the Federation's
own twelve candidates for the organizing committee. This
a] came in response to the proposed nomination of only
two left artists, Al'tman and Marc Chagall, to the committee,
alongside a majority made up of Realists and representatives of
World of Art.
While most speakers at the assembly demanded a strict
separation between art and politics, the "Futurists" did not
equate that separation with art's complete abstinence from
social commitment. Their call for freedom was directed against
administrative encroachment on artistic creation and
institutional control over artists and students.
With the meeting of the Union of Art Workers adjourned,
the left, following Meierkhol'd's suggestion, held its own
meeting at the Trotskii Theater in Petrograd on March 21st.
After speeches by Maiakovskii, Zdanevich, and numerous
others, the art critic Denisov from the left bloc presented
fourteen theses "On the Activities of the Freedom for Art
Federation." (Denisov 's theses were separately published under
the title "The Democratization of Art: Theses on the Program
for the [Fundamental] Union of Left Artists.") In order to
promote their cause, the artists also took to the streets. The
meeting at the Trotskii Theater was accompanied by marches
with posters and banners. Musicians and speakers appeared in
the streets, there were performances in stalls, and from the
platform of a truck a pamphlet was distributed that
summarized the essential demands of the Federation: "Freedom
for art — abolition of government tutelage. Complete
decentralization of cultural life and autonomy for all
institutions and associations that will be funded by the
municipal authorities. Establishment of an All-Russian Artists
Congress. Abolition of all academies, which shall be replaced
by art schools responsible for the training of art teachers.
Replacement of patronage by public support through subsidies
and grants."
The demand for the decentralization of art institutions and
for the autonomy of artistic creation was endorsed by numerous
intellectuals in the Union of Art Workers, among them Sergei
Makovskii, the editor in chief of the art magazine Apollon
(Apollo) who was affiliated with World of Art, as well as the
right-wingers around Sologub and numerous other left-of-
center artists and intellectuals. Yet though they concurred with
the left on many points, these latter groups, who felt an
obligation to preserve and maintain cultural treasures from the
past, considered it impossible to cooperate with the avant-
garde "vandals" of the Freedom for Art Federation. The
bourgeois-democratic revolution had only just begun, and
already deep rifts had opened among the intellectuals. The
different factions could not find a common denominator that
would have enabled them to take even the first practical steps
toward organizing themselves.
Infighting among rival artistic movements and personal
animosity such as that between the "Futurists" and Benua were
as much an obstacle to the self-organization of the artistic
intelligentsia as was the fundamental conflict between the
champions of art's unconditional freedom from government
institutions and the "collaborators" who wanted to entrust the
state with the protection of monuments and artistic treasures
and with the organization of artistic education.
The struggle between the proponents of a new ministry of
fine arts and the "autonomists" Was only marginally about
participation in governmental power or iconoclastic
destruction of traditional values — these were merely the
slogans the hostile camps flung at each other during the Union
of Art Workers' tumultuous sessions. What was really at stake
was the identity of the artistic intelligentsia and their role in
the new society that had emerged out of the confusion and
chaos of the February Revolution. The older generation of
artists, including the members of World of Art, held especially
fast to their traditional self-image as the nation's "upholders of
300
culture." Accordingly, they considered it their mission to
preserve cultural values and to disseminate and anchor them by
educating the people. These tasks, they believed, could be
accomplished only if the artistic and scientific elite worked
closely with the government apparatus. For their opponents
from the left, this cooperation of tradition-conscious art
specialists and government officials portended the
reestablishment of a cultural bureaucracy that would organize
artistic culture according to its own conservative tastes and
manipulate the people by force-feeding them the obsolete
values of an outdated conception of art.
With their sights set firmly forward, the "Futurists"
regarded the passing on of traditional values as secondary, if
not an outright obstacle to the establishment of new values.
This stance was directly opposed to the "upholder of culture"
ideal shared by a majority of Russian intellectuals but
shattered and buried — with the eager assistance of the left
avant-garde — in the fierce quarrels of the Union.
Many intellectuals and artists had placed their high hopes
for a "cultural renewal of Russia" in the Union of Art Workers,
but with the majority of members maneuvering to maintain
their status as "upholders of culture" and to use the
organization for their own goals, the Union reached an
intellectual and operational deadlock. At a session on May n,
1917, Osip Brik, the theorist and organizer of Opoiaz (the
Society for the Study of Poetic Language) and later founder of
the Productivist movement, denounced the Union (which did,
after all, have over eight hundred nominal members from
almost all artistic groups) for its failure to achieve practical
results. Many of those in attendance agreed with him.
After the October Revolution
In the tumultuous months following the February Revolution,
the Union of Art Workers debacle revealed that artists and
intellectuals were lost in their attempt to determine their
position in the new society. While attitudes toward tradition
and the new government were markers of an obvious divide,
they were merely symptoms of the intelligentsia's quandary
without czarism as a unifying counterforce and of their
insecurity concerning their function in a rapidly changing
society.
With the radicalization of the masses in the summer of
1917, the crisis among artists and intellectuals intensified. They
had to learn that the "people" embraced them neither as
cultural saviors nor as anything else. In the months between
the anti-czarist February Revolution and the anti-bourgeois
October Revolution, a growing number of people
unceremoniously classified artists and other intellectuals,
regardless of their personal property or political stance, as
members of the hated bourgeoisie. "Intellectual" and
"bourgeois" became synonymous in the minds of the
radicalized masses. Artists — and all the members of the
intelligentsia — suddenly saw themselves denounced as enemies
of the working class and ranked among the "superfluous
persons" of the detested past. The break between the insurgent
masses and the intelligentsia culminated in the October
Revolution. The ousting of the Provisional Government and
the Bolshevik takeover gave most intellectuals outside the
radical leftist parties such a shock that they remained silent for
several months or passively boycotted the new rulers.
Attempts by the People's Commissar of Enlightenment,
Anatolii Lunacharskii, to establish contacts with the artistic
intelligentsia were summarily turned down in the first weeks
and months following the October Revolution. Only days after
the proclamation of the Soviet state on October 25th, the
revolutionary government (the All-Russian Central Executive
Committee) extended a widely publicized invitation to
Petrograd artists, writers, and actors to come to the Smolnyi
Institute, the new seat of government, to discuss prospective
cooperation. A mere six persons showed up: Aleksandr Blok,
L. Reisner, and David Shterenberg, as well as the most active
members of the Freedom for Art Federation, Al'tman,
Maiakovskii, and Meierkhol'd. After this failure, Lunacharskii
on November 12th asked Punin, Al'tman's co-secretary in
Freedom for Art, to mediate between the government and the
Union of Art Workers. Via Punin, he proposed the
establishment of a Department of Artistic Affairs in which
artists and government officials would be equally represented.
The proposal was debated in the organizing committee and in
the different factions. While the right and moderate groups
rejected any cooperation with the Bolsheviks on political
grounds, the representatives of the left wing feared for the
freedom of art. In a third attempt Lunacharskii sent Brik,
another active participant in Freedom for Art and the left bloc,
to suggest the formation of a thirty-member Commission for
the Preservation of Monuments, to be made up of fifteen
delegates from the Union and fifteen representatives of
"democratic" organizations. Once again, the membership as
well as the organizing committee of the Union categorically
refused, even though the committee members Al'tman, Punin,
Maiakovskii, and Meierkhol'd had previously not shied away
from contact with the Soviet government.
The majority of speakers at the Union meeting objected to
the "Bolsheviks' seizing control over art," while the organizing
committee blamed the Soviet government for having tolerated
and even promoted the destruction of artistic treasures.
Lunacharskii himself had offered his resignation to the Party in
mid-November, because monuments and works of art had been
damaged during the storming of the Winter Palace and the
battles in Moscow. The Council of People's Commissars did not
accept his resignation and on November 17th, the day of his
third offer to the Union, Lunacharskii published his appeal
"Protect the Property of the People!"
That all factions of the Union should have rejected even
limited cooperation is all the more astonishing in view of
Benua's collaboration with the Soviet commissars, only one day
after the storming of the Winter Palace, on a plan to protect
the Palace and the Hermitage. And as early as November, the
Petrograd Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies
organized a Council on Museum Affairs and the Preservation of
Artistic and Historic Monuments under the direction of
Georgii Iatmanov. Benua and other members of World of Art
were among the Council's members.
With the establishment of this Council by the revolutionary
government, the Commission for Artistic Affairs Gor'kii had
formed in March 1917 and dissolved after protests from the
Union on April 27th was essentially reinstated. Benua was even
appointed director of the Hermitage and, with the help of the
authorities, gained considerable influence over the
reorganization of artistic life during the first years after the
October Revolution. The Union's left faction as well as some
right-wing members opposed to the earlier Commission now
saw what they had feared come to pass under completely
different political circumstances. While the bourgeois
Provisional Government had hesitated to undermine the
Union's autonomy by forcing an alliance with Gor'kii's
Commission, the Bolshevik government acted against many
Union members' call for self-determination and subscribed to
the preservationist approach by appointing the Council on
Museum Affairs.
Anticipating such a move, the members of the left bloc
took swift action. At the Union's meeting on November 17th,
where Lunacharskii's offer to establish a Commission for the
Preservation of Monuments was discussed, they submitted a
301
resolution calling for the autonomy of artistic creation and
sharply criticizing the commissar's plans as an attack on the
freedom of art, particularly avant-garde art:
Commissar Lunacharskii's appeal touches only vaguely on the
government's attitude toward the autonomy of art; it asks the present
left movement to surrender meekly to stale academicism and to the
bureaucrats of art. With this appeal to the Union of Art Workers,
Lunacharskii openly undermines the beginnings of the only correct and
viable attempt to build our future artistic culture, as that culture is
propagated by left tendencies in art, and hands over power to the
backward and irresponsible "custodians" of art.
When shortly after this resolution the Council on Museum
Affairs was established, several members of the left bloc
reconsidered the Soviet government's earlier proposal to
establish a Department of Artistic Affairs — so that they might
gain at least some administrative clout against the
academicians and "custodians." When on December 2, 1917,
the Petrograd daily Nash vek (Our Age) reported Lunacharskii's
renewed plans for the formation of a Department of Proletarian
Art within Narkompros (the People's Commissariat of
Enlightenment), the Union of Art Workers responded with
protests. Once more, the Union stressed that only an
independent organization of artists was competent to decide
cultural issues. Nonetheless, Izo Narkompros (the Department
of Fine Arts of Narkompros) was officially formed on January
29, 1918, with Shterenberg as its head. Izo Narkompros 's Art
Board, which was not organized until March, was also chaired
by Shterenberg and included two secretaries of the Freedom for
Art Federation, Al'tman and Punin. The other members of the
board — Karev, Sergei Chekhonin, Aleksandr Matveev, Petr
Vaulin, and Iatmanov — represented more or less traditional
artistic tendencies.
It was not only the conservatives from the Union of Art
Workers who cried out that art had been "betrayed." The left
bloc as well took "no responsibility for the actions of the
persons in question" — meaning Al'tman, Punin, and the other
members of the Art Board.4
Accusations and disclaimers were a predictable response.
What sense would it have made to defend the freedom of art
from government control only to desist unceremoniously once
the new regime was in place? The months-long struggle of the
Freedom for Art Federation and the left bloc would have been
pointless — even if many of the left artists, writers, and critics
sympathized politically with the Soviet government.
Reservations about collaborating with government
institutions of any kind were not limited to the Petrograd
avant-garde. Seeking to extend the reach and effectiveness of
the Petrograd Izo Narkompros, Al'tman, Punin, and Lur'e
went to Moscow in early April to form an Art Board there. In
an appeal worded in typical "Futurist" diction and published
in the newspaper Anarkhiia (Anarchy) on April 9, 1918, they
specifically called on "comrades Maiakovskii and Tatlin," their
fellow members in the Union's left bloc, to cooperate with Izo
Narkompros.
The left bloc had sent Tatlin to Moscow on April 12, 1917,
as a representative of the Union. His mission was "to get in
touch with the left Moscow artists and establish contact with
their organization or [if none existed] organize a left bloc." In
Moscow, he was elected chairman of the left federation of the
Professional Union of Artists and Painters, which was formed
in the summer of 1917 (Rodchenko was appointed secretary).
As in the Petrograd Union of Art Workers, three factions
emerged in the Moscow Professional Union, though this time
each faction or federation had its own chairman and secretary
from the outset. The right federation consisted of older
painters from the Wanderers movement, the center of members
of World of Art, and the left, or young, federation of Cubo-
Futurists, Suprematists, and other non-objective artists.
Establishment of the Professional Union was accompanied by
the first public recognition, from more established quarters, of
the avant-garde. In late 1917 the club of the left federation
mounted an exhibition of Rodchenko's works; the first
comprehensive exhibition of the Professional Union opened in
May 1918.
Immediately after the October Revolution, Tatlin, like
many other members of the left bloc, left the Union of Art
Workers in Petrograd. On November 21st, the Moscow
Professional Union elected him its delegate to the Art
Department of the Moscow Council of Workers' and Soldiers'
Deputies. By his own description in later years, Tatlin thus
became one of the first artists to cooperate with the Soviet
government, and it was only natural that he was appointed
chairman of the newly-formed Moscow Art Board in April
1918. Tatlin remained in that position until June 1919 and
managed to secure the cooperation of important members of
the avant-garde, including Sofia Dymshits-Tolstaia, Vasilii
Kandinskii, Aleksei Morgunov, Kazimir Malevich, Rodchenko,
Wladyskw Strzemihski, and Udal'tsova. Yet none of these
artists spontaneously decided to join Izo Narkompros. It took
most of them a long time to examine and clarify their own
attitudes toward the government. The anti-institutional stance
had not yet disappeared.
The Supreme Ego of the Anarchists
Tatlin, like many other avant-garde artists, was politically
closer to the anarchists than to the Communist Bolsheviks. On
March 29, 1918, he published an appeal in Anarchy urging "all
my confederates ... to enter the breach I made in obsolete
values" so that their minds could "embark on the path of
anarchism."
The artist wrote this appeal in response to a "Letter to Our
Comrades, the Futurists" published four days previously in the
same paper by a certain Plamen and calling on the "Futurists"
to put their work in the service of the revolution. The "Letter"
criticized the nonpolitical wing of the "Futurists" who were
supposedly preoccupied with decorating cafes and designing
furniture for the bourgeoisie. The writer was referring to the
Cafe Pittoresque, whose "Futurist" interior had been decorated
in the winter of 1917— 18 by numerous artists including
Aleksandr Drevin, Rodchenko, Tatlin, and Udal'tsova under
the guidance of the painter and stage designer Georgii Iakulov.
The Cafe Pittoresque was a milestone on the way to
Constructivism. For the first time, the materials and formal
vocabulary of the new non-objective art were applied to and
synthetically integrated in a public space. Tatlin, in his
response to the "Letter," agrees with the anarchist critics that
"the 'Futurists' are overly concerned with cafe society and
assorted embroideries for emperors and court ladies" (the latter
probably an allusion to Ol'ga Rozanova's Suprematist
embroidery designs shown in December 1917 at the Vtoraia
vystavka dekorativnogo iskusstva [Second Exhibition of Decorative
Art] in Moscow).
Tatlin conceded, nonetheless; that there were at the time no
other public outlets for artists committed to social change: "I
am waiting for well-equipped artistic workshops where the
artist's psychic machinery can be accordingly overhauled."
With the creation of the State Free Art Workshops in October
1918, his wish became a reality — at least in part, since well-
equipped these workshops were certainly not.
In his open letter, Plamen differentiated between the
bourgeois wing of the "Futurists" and the revolutionary forces
in their ranks, namely, Maiakovskii. At the time the poet,
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conceptualise, and brilliant mouthpiece of the avant-garde still
strongly sympathized with anarchist ideas and groups. His
attitude was representative of that of most "Futurists" in the
first months after the October Revolution, when the political
anarchists were still tolerated by the Bolsheviks and even
received limited support from the party's left wing under
Nikolai Bukharin. After initial contacts with the Bolsheviks,
and in particular with Lunacharskii, Maiakovskii grew
disenchanted with their traditionalist cultural program and
left Petrograd, soon after the Revolution. He went to Moscow,
where he and two old friends from Cubo-Futurist days — the
painter David Burliuk and the poet Vasilii Kamenskii —
opened the Kafe poetov (Poets' Cafe) in Nastas'inskii Lane.
"I remember the Kafe poetov in Moscow in 1918," Il'ia
Erenburg wrote in his memoirs. "It was patronized by a crowd
that did not exactly deal in poetry — speculators, women of
doubtful reputation, young people who called themselves
'Futurists' ... It was quite a peculiar place."
The ideology of the Kafe poetov was suffused by
antiauthoritarian anarchism. In accordance with the anarchist
tilt in the name of the Freedom for Art Federation, the three
artists of the cafe called themselves the Federation of Futurists.
With his two comrades, Maiakovskii published the Gazeta
futuristov {Futurists' Newspaper), in whose first and only issue on
March 15th he declared, in an "Open Letter to the Workers,"
that "Futurism" was the aesthetic counterpart of
"socialism/anarchism" and that only a "revolution of the
psyche" could liberate workers from the shackles of obsolete
art. The collective declaration "Decree No. 1 on the
Democratization of Art" pronounced spontaneous graffiti the
only legitimate revolutionary art:
/. In keeping with the liquidation of the czar is t regime, the
existence of art in the depots and sheds of human genius — the palaces,
galleries, salons, libraries, and theaters — is abolished as of now.
2. In the name of progress and the equality of all before culture, the
Free Word of the creative personality shall be written on the walls,
fences, roofs, and streets of our towns and cities; on the backs of
automobiles, coaches, and trams; and on the clothes of all citizens.
The Russian Futurists' painting of their bodies before the
war, the graffiti on the walls of the Kafe poetov, the Futurist
parole in liberta — whatever broke out into the streets and
announced the creative freedom of everyone everywhere was
proclaimed the Revolution's true artistic form of expression.
Art, in Maiakovskii and his friends' minds, was supposed to be
politically effective without submitting to the state. According
to their credo, only free and spontaneous art could set off the
"revolution of the psyche" considered essential to the social and
intellectual continuation of the political and economic
revolution.
The manifestos in the Futurists' Newspaper breathed the old
anarchic spirit of the Freedom for Art Federation. Only, the
combative tone had become sharper after the October
Revolution. The "Manifesto of the Flying Federation of
Futurists," published in the same paper, called on the
"proletarians" to join the "third, bloodless but nonetheless
cruel, revolution, the revolution of the psyche."
The political anarchists accepted the Futurists' Newspaper as
an organ of anarchism5 and endorsed the House of Free Art
briefly operated by Maiakovskii, Burliuk, and Kamenskii as
one of the anarchist clubs in Moscow. The House, a restaurant
requisitioned for the purpose by the trio, was dedicated to the
"individual anarchism of creation," as their paper put it. But
the House of Free Art existed for only a few days and was
closed by the end of March. On April 14th, the Kafe poetov
was shut down as well. Two days before, the newly-founded
Cheka had carried out its first raid in Moscow: in the anarchist
clubs some six hundred people had been arrested and forced to
hand over their arms. Feliks Dzerzhinskii, the head of the
Cheka, announced that the majority of those rounded up were
criminals and only one percent were "ideological anarchists."6
It is not clear whether the closing of the Kafe poetov was a
direct consequence of this police action. The coincidence of
events, however, signals the end of a distinctly anarchistic
phase in both the political revolution and the history of
Russian "Futurism" (even though the political anarchists were
not quite neutralized until 1920).
The fundamental opposition between the Bolsheviks and
the anarchists, who had broad support among the Russian
peasants and workers, lay in their attitudes toward the state.
The anarchists categorically rejected the state as the ruling
classes' instrument of oppression. The Bolsheviks, by contrast,
considered it necessary to maintain the state throughout the
transition from capitalism to Communism, even though the
bourgeois form of the state had to be "broken up" during the
revolution. "We need a revolutionary government, " Lenin wrote
in March 1919 in his "Letter from Afar." "For a certain
transitional period we need the state. That is what distinguishes
us from the anarchists. The difference between revolutionary
Marxists and anarchists is not only that the former believe in
centralized, Communist production on a large scale and the
latter in industrial scatteration. No, the difference vis-a-vis
government, vis-a-vis the state, is that we are for exploiting the
revolutionary forms of the state in the fight for socialism
whereas they are against it."
Given Maiakovskii 's anarchistic stance, it seems logical that
he first rejected Al'tman, Punin, and Lur'e's offer to cooperate
with the Moscow Art Board of Izo Narkompros. The
federalism and "individual anarchism of creation" promoted by
him, Burliuk, and Kamenskii and the state socialists' principle
of centralism and large-scale production ruled each other out.
Only after a long period of hesitancy and under changed
political circumstances would he finally decide, in the winter
of 1918, to join Brik and collaborate with Izo Narkompros. For
the moment, he continued to advocate the separation of state
and art as proclaimed by the Freedom for Art Federation and
the Futurists' Newspaper.
Being closer to anarchism than to Bolshevism or
Communism, other members of the Federation also continued
to cling to this principle after the October Revolution.
Morgunov, Rodchenko, and Tatlin at one time or another all
worked in the Activist Group of the Moscow Association of
Anarchist Groups. On April 2, 1918, Anarchy published the
following salute to Rodchenko and others among the future
Constructivists: "With pride we look upon your creative
rebellion. We congratulate the creator Rozanova on her
impressive compositions of lively colors. We congratulate the
creator Udal'tsova on her savage non-objective oil paintings.
We congratulate the creator Rodchenko on his spirited three-
dimensional constructions of colored forms ..."
The fiercest of all the blasts of anarchist fervor gusted from
the articles Malevich regularly wrote for Anarchy from March
to July 1918. Inspired by revolutionary events, the artist for the
first time used the medium of writing to develop and expand
his Suprematist conception of art into a conception of the
world. The artistic principle of non-objectivity served him as a
starting point for a nihilistic ontology which negated material
reality as well as any form of state. In a tone of acerbic sarcasm,
Malevich tackled the official art policy of the new ruling
powers. He rebuffed Al'tman, Punin, and Lur'e on their visit to
Moscow with a taunting polemic entitled "On the Arrival of
Voltairean Terrorists from Petersburg."" While he did not
consider them capable of deposing Benua, his objections were
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of a more fundamental nature: "The appointment of kings,
ministers, or soldiers of art is just as much an act of artistic
counterrevolution as the opening of a cafe of any kind,"
Malevich wrote with a view to the anarchist criticism of the
Cafe Pittoresque. "Whenever a state is being built, a prison
will be erected once the state is there." Therefore the
revolution must "destroy all foundations of the old so that
states will not rise from the ashes."
In keeping with the anarchist principle of individualism,
Malevich declared "our ego" to be "supreme." In his argument,
the supremacy of the ego can only be realized by liberating it
from the shackles of the state and material objects. The
revolution of the psyche through "individual anarchic creation"
proclaimed by the Futurists' Newspaper was also on Malevich's
mind when he promoted anarchism: "The banner of anarchism
is the banner of our ego and like a free wind our spirit will
billow our creative work through the vast spaces of our soul."8
Speaking for the Suprematist group — which at the time
included Morgunov, Liubov' Popova, Rodchenko, Rozanova,
Udal'tsova, and Aleksandr Vesnin as well as the anarchist
radical Aleksei Gan — Malevich used Lenin's dictum of the
"breaking up" of the state as an analogy for the withering away
of material reality: "Our creative work elevates neither palaces
nor hovels, neither velvet gowns nor coarse clothes, neither
songs nor words . . . Like a new planet in the blue dome over
the sunken sun, we are the frontier to an absolutely new world,
and we declare all things nonexistent.'"' Consequently Malevich
at that point rejected any practical application of Suprematism
for the poor or for the rich. Involvement in a government
institution such as Izo Narkompros was anathema to him for
the same reason. A year after Al'tman and Punin's appeal, in
1919, Malevich was finally willing to ease his stance toward the
state. By that time, the more cooperative "Futurists" in Izo
Narkompros had already attained many of their goals. The
Freedom for Art Federation's old demand for the abolition of
the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts had been fulfilled on April
12, 1918. In October of the same year it was replaced by the
State Free Art Workshops, established first in Moscow and
Petrograd and later throughout the country. The workshops
were free not only in terms of free access for all students,
regardless of their prior education, but also because the student
body was free to elect its own teachers. Malevich taught at the
State Free Art Workshops in Moscow until the autumn of 1919,
when he joined the Popular Art School in Vitebsk and began to
organize Unovis (the Affirmers of the New Art).
The organization of State Exhibitions also lay in the
jurisdiction of Izo Narkompros. Al'tman and the other
vanguard artists in Izo Narkompros took full advantage of this
to introduce their comrades-in-art to the broad public in
numerous solo and group exhibitions, thus promoting the
notion of their leading role. In addition, Izo Narkompros
organized extensive open exhibitions sponsored by the state
but, in the absence of a selection committee, virtually beyond
its artistic arbitration. Following these principles of funding
and selection, the organizers achieved their own earlier
demands that art be free but at the same time subsidized by
the state.
As early as December 1918, the members of Izo Narkompros
began establishing museums of a new type, the so-called
museums of artistic culture. Created all over the country, they
were endowed with important avant-garde works. Among their
most active organizers after 1919 were Kandinskii, Malevich,
Rodchenko, and Tatlin. Under its avant-garde leadership, the
Museum Department of Izo Narkompros succeeded in
establishing thirty-six museums of contemporary art; another
twenty-six were in the planning stage when the department
was dissolved in 1921. As Rodchenko, the head of the Moscow
Museum Department, remarked with some satisfaction, "the
department generously supplied the provinces with
contemporary art, an achievement unprecedented in the world
and an advance over the West the commune can rightly be
proud of."10
With the formation of Izo Narkompros and the continuous
expansion of its staff through the involvement of almost all
important avant-garde artists, a rather contradictory situation
emerged that would last for a brief two and a half years and
prove extremely fruitful for the development of the artistic
avant-garde. Artists who were largely hostile to the state,
ideologically indebted to anarchism, and committed to the
spiritual and organizational freedom of artistic creation had
found an institutional vehicle to introduce their art to the
masses in art schools, exhibitions, and museums funded by the
state. And yet, despite this favorable position, the new
tendencies in art were unable to gain broader acceptance either
among the public or within the Party and the administration.
They were tolerated, however, if only for a short time.
Immediately after the February Revolution, spontaneously
formed artists' groups such as Join the Revolution! — with
Brik, Bruni, Ermolaeva, Mikhail Le-Dantiu, Lur'e,
Maiakovskii, Meierkhol'd, Tatlin, Dymshits-Tolstaia, and
Viktor Shklovskii as members — had signaled their willingness
to write and design catchy, expressive posters, banners, and
manifestos for the "comrades." Publishing appeals and their
telephone numbers, the artists' groups offered their services. It
is unknown whether the revolutionary political forces took
them up on their offer.
After the October Revolution, Malevich won the
competition for decorations for the Congress of Committees on
Rural Poverty. He created a Suprematist cover design for the
delegates' document folder (plate nos. 123—125) and decorated
the assembly hall of the Winter Palace with Suprematist
shapes. With Mikhail Matiushin, he painted a huge, 900-foot-
wide canvas within twenty-four hours. He designed speaker's
rostrums (plate no. 130) and, with El Lissitzky, curtains (plate
no. 136) for the 1919 meeting in Vitebsk of the Committee to
Abolish Unemployment. Lissitzky gave an account of his and
Malevich's joint activities in his 1922 lecture on "New Russian
Art": "In Vitebsk we painted a 16,000-square-foot canvas for a
factory celebration, decorated three buildings, and created the
stage decorations for the festive meeting of the factory
committee in the city theater." It is safe to assume that neither
the representatives of the rural poor nor the delegates of the
unemployed were fully aware or appreciative of Malevich's
intended color symbolism: the black square stood for the
economy, the red square for the Revolution, and the white
square for pure action — and together they symbolized the
anarchistic "revolution of the psyche." It was Malevich's
intention that not only Suprematist painting but also the "new
style of Suprematist decoration" would "expel the integrity of
the object from consciousness," as he put it in the catalogue of
the Tenth State Exhibition, Bespredmetnoe tvorcbestvo i
suprematizm {Non-Objective Creation and Suprematism, Moscow,
1919). Suprematist murals and interior decorations were meant
to testify to the fall of objective reality and the dawning of
purely spiritual action. The delegates, however, probably
perceived them as stimulating and lively decorative patterns.
The fight against the material monuments of the past was
also at the heart of what was probably the most spectacular
decoration of a public space in the years immediately following
the October Revolution — Al'tman's huge panels for the
Classical and Baroque fagades and passages onto Palace Square
in Petrograd (plate nos. 103-106) and his cladding of the
Aleksandr Column on the same square. The bright red, yellow,
and orange flames licking at the column as a symbol of the
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overthrow of the czarist regime drove home their message of
the destruction of the old world in a far more direct and
convincing fashion than the symbolically overcharged
Suprematist decorations. A contemporary reviewer pointed out
the artistic merits of Al'tman's design:
A nearly exemplary solution of this task was demonstrated on the
square with the designs of the artist Al'tman. The juxtaposition of old
and new artistic elements is surprising, convincing, and perfectly
unified. The artist does not try to outdo the old masters but. with
unerring instinct, creates something entirely new and contrasting. The
square in front of the Winter Palace is strictly architectonic and
Al'tman complements it with purely painterly impressions: the square
is symmetrical and harmoniously self-contained — Al'tman aims at
mordancy, surprising effects, and peculiarities: the square is
beautifully rounded in space — everything about Al'tman's design is
planar, angular, and dynamic."
The revolutionary message of Al'tman's Cubo-Futurist
construction is not expressed in its formal vocabulary and color
symbolism alone, nor is it a mere illustration of a given slogan
or idea. The spiritual flame of the Revolution and the appeal
for renewal are brought to life only in their visual contrast to
the stone monuments to Imperial traditions.
Al'tman's contextually anchored, incendiary work remained
an exception among the Suprematist and other non-objective
contributions to the revolutionary celebrations. Unlike the
more traditionalist and politically conservative artists, the
representatives of these vanguard movements took part only
sporadically in the extensive programs for the festive
decoration of public spaces initiated by the state. In one
instance, Gustav Klutsis along with other young artists
executed a design by Kliun for the first anniversary of the
October Revolution, painting the branches of the bushes on
Moscow's Teatral'naia Square and in the Aleksandr Garden
along the Kremlin wall a bright blue and wrapping the trees in
silvery gauze. In 1920, Il'ia Chashnik, Nikolai Suetin, and
Lissitzky helped Malevich paint Suprematist designs on
building decorations and curtains in Vitebsk. The same year,
posters with Suprematist designs appeared in the streets of
Smolensk; and in Kiev, Aleksandr Tyshler, Kozineva-Erenburg,
Isaak Rabinovich, and Shifrin — all of them students of
Aleksandra Ekster's — covered the sides of agitprop boats with
Suprematist compositions. Yet the majority of the Suprematists
and future Constructivists probably agreed with Lissitzky
when, immediately after his extensive decoration work for the
1920 celebration of May 1st in Vitebsk, he wrote that the artist
did not have to earn "authorization to work creatively ... by
painting the prescribed posters and implementing all the other
orders" — even though this kind of work numbered among "his
duties as a member of the commune."
If avant-garde artists participated in the design of posters,
banners, or whole buildings, squares, and bridges, they
obviously did so out of a sense of duty rather than inner
conviction or desire — and extra rations of food or clothes were
certainly a further incentive. On the other hand, their
contributions seldom met with much enthusiasm on the part
of their patrons in the administration and the Party. In these
quarters, figurative representations found much more willing
takers, with allegorical figures favored even over realistic ones.
As early as 1919, the Moscow Soviet publicly objected to the
participation of the "Futurists" in the decoration of the
revolutionary celebrations. At the beginning of the same year,
Rodchenko and Stepanova wrote their defiant "Manifesto of the
Suprematists and Non-Objectivists" against the philistines on
the left and on the right:
Emphatically we praise the Revolution as the only motor of
life. . . You small-minded materialists — be off with you! We salute
all you comrades who are fighting for the new ideas in art . . . We
painted our furious canvases amid the jeers and laughter of the
bureaucrats and petit bourgeois who have fled. Now we repeat to the
so-called proletariat of former servants of the monarchy and
intellectuals who have taken their place: We will not give in to you. In
twenty years, the Soviet Republic will be proud of these paintings.
It would take several more decades before this prophecy
came true. But their dominating position in Izo Narkompros
allowed the Suprematists and non-objectivists to circumvent
the apparatchiks for a time and to use the financial and
organizational means of the state to mount several large-scale
exhibitions of their art, to purchase it for the collections of
their newly established museums of artistic culture, and to
disseminate it over the entire country.
The Work of Art as a "Thing"— A Way out of
the Crisis?
During the planning phase of the museums of artistic culture,
the concept of the work of art as apredmet (object) or veshch'
(thing) appeared for the first time. The introduction of this
concept into the discussion about the form and function of art
within the new social framework initiated a radical re-
evaluation of the set of ideas traditionally defining "art." Out
of this reorientation, Constructivism was born.
On November 24, 1918, Izo Narkompros organized a
conference at the Palace of the Arts (as the Winter Palace had
been renamed) in Petrograd. The meeting was to debate
whether art was "A Temple or a Factory" and its list of speakers
included Lunacharskii, Punin, Brik, and Maiakovskii. Iskusstvo
kommuny (Art of the Commune) covered the event in its premiere
issue. In his speech, Punin distinguished between the activity
of the bourgeois artist, who merely designed ornaments and
decorations, and the activity of the worker, who treated
"material" to create "things." Punin expected a "new era in art"
if the artists followed the lead of the workers and began to
produce "things." He strongly objected to the decoration of the
streets for the revolutionary celebrations, since art thus
employed regressed to bourgeois embellishment instead of
rising to the level of industrial production.
According to Punin, the goal of "an autonomous proletarian
art . . . is not a matter of decoration but of the creation of new
artistic objects. Art for the proletariat is not a sacred temple for
lazy contemplation but work, a factory, producing artistic
objects for everyone."'1 He was aware that this conception of
the artistic creation as a "thing" introduced a new paradigm,
which has claimed validity to the present day.
In his speech, Punin did not yet differentiate between the
terms "object" and "thing." Familiar with Tatlin's work for
years and inspired by his counter-reliefs, Punin in his plea for
the object implicitly criticized Malevich, Tatlin's great
adversary, for his promotion of bespredmetnost' (non-objectivity).
It should be noted that the Russian word predmet means
material entities in general, while veshch' denotes a thing
produced by human hands. "Thing" in conventional Russian
usage hence connotes an artistically made object.
By 1919 the critic had come to regard the non-objectivity of
Suprematism as obsolete: the future of modern art was in
Tatlin's "culture of materials." Although Punin, reporting in
1919 on a visit to Moscow, could write that "Suprematism has
blossomed out in splendid colour . . . Posters, exhibitions,
cafes — all is Suprematism,"" he maintained that at the peak of
its success Suprematism had already lost its creative value. As
art it was merely decorative, perfectly suited for the bourgeois
function of embellishment "in textile designs, in cafes, in
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fashion drawings" and hence hopelessly mired in the past.
Seeing Suprematism in such "flagrant opposition to form as the
principle of the new artistic era," Punin praised Tatlin's culture
of materials as "the only creative force free enough to lead art
out of the trenches of the old positions." The day would come
when no one but art teachers would find interest in
Suprematism, while Tatlin's works would emerge as the sole
legitimate "new form."
Others shared Punin's views. Right from the outset, Art of
the Commune endorsed the concept of the artistic "thing" in its
theoretical essays on art and aesthetics. This concept launched a
sweeping transformation of the traditional notion of art as an
expression of feelings, emotions, moods, or ideas. The
magazine's first issue, on December 7, 1918, published on its
front page Brik's programmatic article "Drenazh iskusstvu"
("A Drain for Art"). Siding with Punin, Brik defined artistic
works as "things" and, by using the word veshch', switched the
critical focus from the non-objective art of Suprematism to all
artistic efforts that visualized emotions or ideas instead of
shaping material "things."
Brik's slogan at the time — "Not idealistic fog but the
material thing!" — reflects demands which were in fact
prevalent among workers and insurgents after the February
Revolution. They expressed the disdain the revolutionary
proletarians and peasants felt for the Russian intellectuals and
artists. Erenburg's memoirs record the writer Aleksei Tolstoi's
summary of the conversations during the summer of 1917:
"Will we go to the dogs or won't we? Will Russia be or will it
not be? Will they slaughter the intellectuals or will they leave
us alive?"
Devastated by war and food shortages, the hungry masses
denounced intellectuals and artists as "parasites" who had no
right to exist because they produced no material values but
only ideas — and therefore did not work at all. As early as June
1917, the intellectual leader of the right bloc within the Union
of Art Workers, Sologub, countered these attacks with the
argument that the Russian intelligentsia belonged neither to
the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat but constituted a third class
of its own. Artists and intellectuals produced no material
values as did the proletariat, yet unlike the bourgeoisie they
did not create "merchandise [tovar] but ideas and forms."'4 The
prevailing anti-intellectualism increased in the months
following the October Revolution. As the situation worsened
because of hunger and cold, the verbal attacks escalated into
physical assaults. In the winter of 1917, the few liberal
publications that still existed reported a regular "crusade"
against the intelligentsia, a great majority of whom considered
themselves on the side of the people in the fight against
czarism. The standard question Russian artists and intellectuals
had asked themselves since the nineteenth century — "What is
the intelligentsia?" — underwent a dramatic revision as the
intelligentsia's very right to exist was cast into doubt. The
writers of Art of the Commune provided a pragmatic answer: they
argued that in the new state artists had a right to exist only if
they became specialists in the production of certain "things"
and thereby voided the accusation of being parasitic fabricators
of immaterial goods.
While Brik and Punin introduced the concept of the
"thing" into the discussion of the future of art, the notion had
figured first in the debates about the further existence or
nonexistence of the intelligentsia. On March 31, 1918, Russian
writers organized a large conference in Petrograd that focused
on "The Tragedy of the Intelligentsia." Picking up Sologub's
distinction between the proletarian "producers of things" and
the intellectual "producers of ideas," the speakers agreed that
the prerevolutionary intelligentsia had made a fatal mistake by
concentrating on the social and educational sector and
neglecting the technological and industrial field. The
idealization of the "people" and the desire to serve them had
caused the intellectuals' uselessness in all practical matters and
brought about their present "tragedy."'s As in the Union of Art
Workers after the February Revolution, so now there were
demands for autonomous professional organizations and greater
public recognition of the value of intellectual and artistic work.
In return for their autonomy, the artists and intellectuals were
called upon to show greater professionalism in dealing with their
specific material. Instead of their genuine but often idealistic
or romanticizing commitment to the people, an increased
discipline in their actual professional work was required.
These arguments essentially reiterated the critique of the
populist but often dilettantish intellectuals of the old type and
the demand — put forth as early as 1909 in a volume of essays
entitled Vekhi (Guideposts) — for a new, technically qualified
intelligentsia. Fiercely debated when it was published, the
book attacked the separate course the Russian intelligentsia
had taken. Proceeding from an astute analysis and a polemical
indictment of their hallowed principles, the authors demanded
that Russians follow the example of the scientific,
technological, and artistic intelligentsia of the West and adopt
their "objective values," specialized knowledge, and
professional institutions. "The average intellectual in Russia
neither likes nor understands his job," Aleksandr Itsgoev wrote
in Guideposts. "He considers his profession something
accidental and insignificant that does not deserve great respect.
If he loves his profession and invests all his energy in it, he can
expect some contemptuous sarcasm from his comrades, be they
genuine revolutionaries or just worthless phrasemongers. But
real influence on the populace, a great specific weight in
today's life, can only be reached with sound and solid
expertise."
Ten years later, the situation of intellectuals and artists had
not changed much. Significantly, it was the fledgling
proletarian intelligentsia that provided the first catalyst for a
reorientation. By 1918, Gor'kii would write in the journal
Novaia zhizn ' (New Life):
The cultural vanguard among the working class is beginning to see
how important it is for workers to acquire scientific and technical
knowledge . . . This appreciation of knowledge and work is new in
Russia; it becomes apparent in the facts workers and union members
cited in their memoranda urging the establishment of institutes for
several industries including the ceramics, glass, and porcelain
industries. It is quite characteristic that it was the workers who
pointed out the necessity to quickly develop the handicrafts industry. '"
The Constructivist theory of "production art" reacted to
these stimuli from the proletarian intelligentsia by trying to
synthesize artistic creation and crafts on a higher, i.e.,
industrial, level of productivity. For the implementation of this
synthesis, artists and craftsmen alike had to rely on the
scientific and technological advancement of their methods,
tools, and materials.
To early Productivist theorists such as Brik, Boris Kushner,
and Punin, this "reification" of works of art seemed to be the
only rescue for art and artists. The strategies they developed to
redefine the function of artists after the October Revolution
undoubtedly laid the foundations for Constructivism. Yet it
took another two years before the new concept of art sketched
out in Art of the Commune and the developments within avant-
garde art began to mesh. When in December 1921 the artists at
Inkhuk approved Brik's proposal to end artistic
experimentation and take up industrial production, it was the
result of a long and complicated process of rapprochement
between theoretical concepts and non-objective art. Even if
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neither side could claim leadership in this mutual process, the
artists' permanent self-examination and the extreme
intellectualization of their creative work between 1918 and 1921
point toward the dominance of theorizing in the formation of
Constructivism.
"Professionalism," a word chosen no doubt in deference to
the technical specialists of the West, became a key term in the
budding Constructivists' efforts to redefine the role and
function of artists and thereby to overcome their existential
crisis. In texts written between 1918 and 1921, first Brik and
Kushner and then Rodchenko, Stepanova, Gan, Arvatov, the
Stenberg brothers, Medunetskii, and Karl Ioganson
persistently stressed the necessity of abolishing artistic instinct
in favor of a professional approach — based on appropriate
methods of technical manufacture and construction — to the
artistic materials of color and form. On the other hand, Tatlin
as well as Malevich, Lissitzky, and the members of Unovis
categorically rejected this rationalization of the creative process
and defended the importance of intuition in the choice and
treatment of materials. It was this disagreement about the role
of intuition that accounted for the artists' differing attitudes
toward technology. Neither Tatlin nor Unovis was generally
opposed to the artistic use of technological tools and materials.
But unlike the Constructivists at Inkhuk, they rejected the
mechanization of creative methods and the reduction of the
creative process to rational operations.
The rationalization of the creative process and its subjection
to instrumentalist principles were the result of discussions
held at Inkhuk between January and April 1921. The
discussions dealt with the artistic relationship between
composition and construction, the one being defined as
unconscious intuition, the other as deliberate methodical
calculation during the shaping of an aesthetic product. Before
1921, such methodological and technological terms and ideas
had played a minor role, if any. Before the First Working
Group of Constructivists of Inkhuk was formed in March 1921,
and before the artists around Rodchenko began their close
cooperation with the theorist Gan, artistic intuition was
appreciated rather than denounced, and if technical issues were
discussed, they were issues of painting technique. There is a
difference between art historians like Punin or linguists like
Brik or Shklovskii analyzing the materials and methods by
which a given work of art is made, and artists and theorists
translating this analytical approach of the Formalist school into
practical instructions for the methodical construction of new
works or "objects." For better or for worse, the scientific
character and rationality of methods for analyzing art were
transformed into rationalist, scientific methods of constructing
art. Inkhuk, an association of Formalist academics, cultural
theorists, and artists, was ideally suited for plotting this new
course, which turned analytical methods into production
methods and expanded them into a sociological theory of the
artist's role in society.
While the theorists provided the language of
Constructivism as early as 1918, Constructivism itself did not
emerge until 1921, with artists tentatively probing what was for
them uncharted ground. If Rodchenko in his programmatic
essay "Liniia ("The Line," 1921) described the development
from the figurative "picture" to the faktura-determlned
"objects" of color painting to the colorless, non-faktura line
construction as a logical and conscious progression, it was due
more to the artist's rationalizing hindsight than to the actual
process of decision making during that dramatic period. His
teleological reconstruction is, however, understandable when
one recalls that the essay was commissioned by the Inkhuk
director, Brik, and was meant to demonstrate the evolution
that led to Constructivism and its creation of "objects."
In what was essentially an account of his own development
over the previous three years, Rodchenko concluded that the
treatment of paint as an autonomous expressive medium had
led to a "painterliness":
The painterly approach was created, and the picture ceased to exist
as such, becoming either a painting or an object . . .
Thus an element that appears arbitrary rose to lasting preeminence
because it uas the very essence of painting, it was professionalism in
painting. ''
Professional creation in this sense means the conscious,
rationally calculated production of nonsymbolic objects, not
the intuitive composition of paintings. By 1921, the time for
"arbitrary" discoveries of new materials, methods, or
techniques was apparently over. Intuition had been replaced by
precise methods of construction and experimentally planned
invention.
The Art of the Commune writers — particularly Brik, Punin,
and Kushner — added a sociological element to these arguments
for professionalizing artistic creation. Unlike the old
intelligentsia, who had emphasized artists' political, moral, and
pedagogical commitment to the uneducated and
disenfranchised peasants and workers, the new theorists
stressed artists' professional and technical skills, which were
needed in the proletarian society — their practical expertise,
which essentially put them on one level with the workers.
Brik coined the term "artist-proletarian" to express this new
conception of the artist's role. It is interesting to compare
Brik's texts with the notes Rodchenko made in April 1918,
probably as an outline for an appeal of the left federation of the
Professional Union of Artists and Painters. His manifesto "To
the Artist-Proletarians" describes the avant-garde artist as a
"proletarian of the paintbrush" and an oppressed "creator-
martyr": "We, who are in a worse situation than the oppressed
workers, are workers for our livelihood as well as creators of art.
We, who live in holes, have neither paint nor light nor time for
creating. Proletarians of the paintbrush, we must unite, must
establish a Free Association of Oppressed Artists, must demand
bread and studios and our existential rights."
In contrast to this view of the artist as a subproletarian who
is joined with the revolutionary proletariat in poverty but not
in his professional work, Brik's definition of the "artist-
proletarian," formulated six months later, presents the artist in
his positive future incarnation. In the interval between these
two definitions, the anarchist phase of the Revolution ended,
Lenin declared the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the
Bolshevik Party took total control of the state.
These political changes were reflected in the shifting
meaning of the term "artist-proletarian." Writing in 1918, Brik
asks who will create the "art of the future" or "proletarian
art."'8 He rejects the slogan "art for the proletariat" as well as
the Proletkul't (Proletarian Culture) motto "art by the
proletariat." The first slogan, Brik believes, is still mired in the
old "consumerist thinking" since it simply replaces the
bourgeois private patron with a proletarian "mass patron,"
without changing the role of the artist as merely a talented
entertainer. Brik also denounces the Proletkul't idea that
proletarian art can only be created by proletarians, illustrating
his point with a reference to the Proletkul't studios where this
approach has generated "not proletarian works but untalented
parodies of outworn art forms of the past." He concludes:
"proletarian art is neither 'art for the proletariat' nor 'art by the
proletariat'. It is art by artist-proletarians. They and they alone
will create the art of the future."
But what distinguishes the "artist-proletarian" from the
bourgeois artist? Brik names two essential criteria. While the
307
bourgeois artist considers creation "his own private affair" and
produces works of art "to enhance his ego," the proletarian
artist creates in order to fulfill "a socially important task"
within the "collective." While the bourgeois artist seeks to
please the masses, the proletarian artist "fights against their
stubbornness and leads them in directions that will steadfastly
advance art." Instead of repeating "stereotypes of the past," the
artist-proletarian produces "ever new things" like an inventor
in a field all his own.
In another article, Brik elaborates on several points of his
concept of the proletarian artist."' First he gives an in-depth
criticism of Proletkul't. The "confusion of the the terms
'workers' culture' and 'proletarian culture'" has led Proletkul't
to adopt "long-outdated forms of petit-bourgeois Romanticism
with its cheap heroism and vulgar folkishness." The "artist-
proletarian," by contrast, will not express the will of the
proletariat the way the bourgeois artist used to express his own
ego but fulfill the tasks set by society with a high degree of
professionalism, because: "You can't 'express' the will of other
people, you can only 'execute' it." For all practical purposes
that means expressive art, be it collective or subjective, has to
give way to the functional execution of the "social task" in the
appropriate medium. In addition, Brik stresses that
"organization" is an "essential element of the proletarian
movement" and must therefore also determine the work of the
"artist-proletarian." (Brik's demand for artistic "organization"
and his closing sentence — "We . . . demand the unconditional
implementation of the dictatorship of the proletariat in all
fields of cultural development" — read like an echo of Lenin's
April 1918 article, "The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet
Government," which called for '"harmonious organization' and
dictatorship.") 2°
The term "artist-proletarian" underwent several
metamorphoses over the next few years. During the formative
phase of Constructivism, around 1921, it became "artist-
constructor," and in 1922, when the Constructivists shifted
from "pure" constructions to the production of utilitarian
objects, they settled on "artist-engineer." Whatever the exact
expression, the concept behind it is that originally defined by
Brik. It can be summarized as follows:
•Professionalism instead of dilettantism
•Material and professional execution of socially important
tasks instead of symbolic expression of the subjective ego or
the collective will of the proletarian masses
•Production of ever new forms to fight against the taste
stereotypes of the unenlightened masses
•Methodical organization of artistic creation
Elaborated during the first year after the October Revolution
as a defense of artistic production, these criteria remained valid
Constructivist guidelines throughout the 1920s. Yet although
they proved fruitful in the beginning, they carried the seeds of
their own destruction. The basic contradiction between artistic
autonomy through professionalism, innovation, and the
rejection of expressive art, on the one hand, and the
employment of art as an instrument for implementing social
tasks and organizing life, on the other, could be an open and
productive one only as long as its dialectic balance was not
upset by external political forces. By 1930 at the latest, the
scale had tipped.
Brik's line of reasoning managed to combine the Formalist
school's demand for the autonomy of artistic creation, the anti-
intellectual ism of the masses, and the Communist Party's
demand for the dictatorship of the proletariat — albeit in a
precarious and unstable synthesis.
Throughour the 1920s, the theoretical unity of the two
contradictory propositions had to be constantly restored by
word and action. The numerous manifestos and programs
formulated by the Constructivists during this period as well as
the formation of groups such as Komfut (the Communists-
Futurists), Lef (the Left Front of the Arts), Novyi Lef (New
Lef)> or October testify to the attempt to resolve or at least to
bridge the intrinsic conflict.
Even if the balance among artistic autonomy, functional
design, and Party discipline was frequently threatened in these
years, it broke down only after 1930, when autonomy was
subordinated to function and function was defined by the
Party.
The Museum of Painterly Culture — A Museum
of Objects
In the discussion about establishing new museums of artistic
culture, the categories "object," "professionalism" of artistic
creation, and "perfection" were developed and defined in the
sense of an evolution of material treatment and introduced
to a wider circle of artists. The original plan for the museums
was formulated and proposed in July 1918 by Tatlin. His
proposal still breathed the spirit of the Freedom for Art
Federation, emphasizing the artists' autonomy in organizing
the museums and selecting their collections. The museums
were supposed to be institutions of "art and education for the
masses." Tatlin described Izo Narkompros as "the only forum
competent to . . . create a museum of contemporary, living art"
and assigned it the task of independently compiling a list of
artists who would be represented in the museums. The selected
artists would then determine which of their works should go to
the museums.
Malevich commented on the artistic policy for the planned
museums in Art of the Commune." In his usual anarchistic,
"Futurist" tone, he sounded off against tradition and
convention, demanding that only the most recent art be
exhibited. Sharply attacking Benua and his Council on
Museum Affairs, Malevich called on all the "living" to "break
off their friendship" with the "conservatives" and be "as
ruthless as life itself," since that was the only way "creative
life" could grow.
Malevich envisioned the museum as a working research
laboratory for artists rather than an exhibition space for passive
viewing pleasure: "Instead of collecting all kinds of old trash, it
is necessary to create laboratories for a global creative-
development machine whose arbors will not turn out dead
representations of objects but artists of living forms . . . We
will produce I-beams, the electricity and light of colors."
Izo Narkompros 's Declaration on Principles of Museum
Administration was approved by the Art Board on February 7,
1919. It stressed the expertise of artists and the autonomy of the
planned institution, stating: "Artists, as those solely competent
in matters of contemporary art and as the forces who create
artistic values, alone may oversee acquisitions of contemporary
art and guide the artistic education of the country."22 The
declaration ended with an appeal to renew art by
professionalizing it: "Artists! Unite in the fight for your
professional culture of the future and against the oppressive
fetishism of the past." And at the museum conference convened
in Petrograd on February II, 1919, the concept of artistic
culture was endorsed. The conference speakers included Punin
and Brik (who in "A Drain for Art" had already proclaimed the
museum an exhibition and testing site of real "things.")
Punin and Brik's concept of art as "professional culture" for
the creation of "real things" did not show its full impact until
Rodchenko began endorsing it. As we learn from Stepanova's
diary, on March 27, 1919, Brik met with Rodchenko, then the
secretary of the left federation of the Professional Union of
308
Artists and Painters, to discuss the future cooperation of Izo
Narkompros and the Professional Union in creating the
museums of artistic culture. It was, apparently, the first
encounter between the theorist of "production art" and the
much younger artist, who one month later would make his
spectacular debut at the Tenth State Exhibition and soon after
that emerge as the ideological leader of the Moscow avant-
garde artists. During their first meeting, Brik asked
Rodchenko to present the left federation's ideas to Izo
Narkompros in order to clarify the terms for a joint
organization of the new museums.
Rodchenko, whose thoughts were written down by
Stepanova after Brik's visit, posited a fundamental difference
between Russian and Western painting and wanted the new
museum to emphasize the independence and peculiarities of
Russian painting. According to Rodchenko, Western painting
is synthetic, whereas Russian painting, with its origin in the
icon, is "decorative and analytical." In icons as well as
signboards and the boldly colored lubok (illustrated broadside)
and, finally, Suprematist and non-objective paintings, the
surface plane is an autonomous expressive element: "This great
decorative color-resplendent element is the prime mover of
Russian painting, which we do not value, do not know."2'
Rodchenko suggested a selection and arrangement of works for
the new museum that would present the autonomous evolution
of Russian painting — culminating, of course, in the avant-
garde.
Rodchenko was probably the first to propose an
evolutionary display of art museum exhibits, an idea that was
picked up in the 1920s in Western Europe and America and has
since determined the way works are selected and arranged in
museums of contemporary art all over the world. The notion of
a logical development still informs our image of the history of
modern art, even if it has long been recognized as an artificial,
streamlined reconstruction of the true historical course of
events — a myth created by the avant-garde to legitimize its
own claim of being the ultimate destination of art history.
Yet the more radical aspects of Rodchenko's program never
really caught on. In contrast to the principles of selection and
arrangement that have since become common, his plan rejected
the separation between "high" and "low" art and called for
non-chronological juxtapositions. Quite contrary to the
hierarchic classification of art that had been introduced in West
European museums around 1900 and became standard policy in
the 1920s, Rodchenko had no intention of banishing "inferior"
art from the museum in order to elevate the tastes of the
visitors. His plan put icons next to coarsely and brightly
painted tin signboards, and mass-produced broadsides next to
the Cubist or Suprematist works of professional painters.
Rodchenko's selection criteria reflected not the stylistic
standards of ostensibly objective art historians but a painters
professional interest in the employment and treatment of his
material in the history of painting. In this context,
considerations of genre or medium were as irrelevant as moral
valuations of "high" and "low."
Faktura — The Tangible Things
The name chosen for the new museum in Moscow — the
Museum of Painterly Culture — indicates its founders'
conceptual position. They conceived of pictures as products of a
cultural activity, painting, which in turn was considered a
specialized method of treating paint. While outlining his
views on the museum, Rodchenko was also preparing the
Tenth State Exhibition, which opened on April 27, 1919 — the
first group exhibition in history dedicated exclusively to non-
objective art. In this momentous exhibition, Malevich showed
his metaphysical white-on-white paintings for the first time.
Rodchenko, on the other hand, exhibited a series of black-on-
black paintings (for example, plate nos. 237, 240). Amazement
and admiration among his fellow artists ran high. A few days
before the opening of the show, Stepanova wrote in her diary:
His black paintings are actually the rage of the season. With these
works, he has shown what faktura is . . . No one else has achieved such
variety and depth.
The absorption of painting in itself as a professional element. A
new. interesting faktura, and exclusively painting, i.e.. no 'coloring
but employment of the most unyielding color, black . . . In the 'black'
works nothing besides painting exists. That is why their faktura is so
immensely enhanced . . . Those shining, matte, muddy, uneven, and
smooth parts of the surface result in an extraordinarily powerful
composition. They are so effectively painted that they are in no way
inferior to colors.
In the black paintings, paint has ceased to figure as color or
value; it is solely the treatment of its material substance that
counts. Consequently, the finished work represents nothing
and expresses nothing. Its artistic value springs solely from the
variety of its surface effects and its very novelty. The concept of
professionalism is precisely defined in these paintings:
professional work means "absorption of painting in itself,"
i.e., in its specific material and methods — paint and the
treatment of paint with the objective of making its physical
qualities visible and palpable. The result is a richly diverse
surface — a fascinating "object" without any depth of meaning
or emotion.
The black faktura paintings were a smashing success with
the Moscow artists. On April 29, 1919, two days after the
exhibition opened, Stepanova wrote in her diary: "Anti
[Rodchenko] has scored an amazing success . . . He has stunned
everyone with his masterly skills, his faktura. and people see
him in a completely different light now." In the wake of this
success, Rodchenko became the leading figure among the
Moscow avant-garde innovators, the chief Constructivist, and
the quintessential production artist.
But not only painters embraced Rodchenko's black canvases
as a seminal innovation. The works also stirred the interest of
Brik. The opening of the Tenth State Exhibition initiated a
close interaction between artistic practice and aesthetic theory
which helped determine the further development from faktura
painting to Constructivism and from the Constructivist
laboratory experiments to Productivist art and factographic
photomontage and photography. In Rodchenko, Brik
apparently found the incarnation of his artist-proletarian who
professionally produced objects instead of ideas. Stepanova, in
any event, noted that at the exhibition Brik was "completely
taken with Anti." Rather reserved during his visit with
Rodchenko one month earlier, the magisterial Brik was now
"quite jovial and said that because of Rodchenko, Malevich was
finally passe . . . The black paintings simply astonished him."
What was it that astonished the theorist so much? Despite
his limited oeuvre, Brik was valued as a crucial innovative force
among the Formalist linguists as well as the Constructivists.
The Russian concept of faktura had been introduced into
aesthetic discourse as early as 1912 by David Burliuk and
Vladimir Markov (Waldemars Matvejs) and had since become
one of the most important categories in the "Futurist" theories
of art and literature. From the beginning, faktura had denoted
the visible and palpable result of the physical treatment of
material. Faktura. as the critical element in the progress of art
and the professionalization of the artist, was a recurring
leitmotif in the manifestos and statements of Russian artists
before 1920. In 1919, when Rodchenko was painting his black
canvases, faktura once again became the center of attention,
309
while Suprematism, with it temporarily predominant its anti-
faktura agenda, had been losing some ground since 1915.
"Faktura is the essence of the painterly surface," Popova wrote
in her statement for the catalogue of the Tenth State
Exhibition.
The linguists of the Formalist school, too, made faktura the
dominant artistic standard. In his 1919 "Futurizm"
("Futurism"), Roman Jakobson defined works of art as objects
that were autonomous through their faktura: "A clearly
perceptible faktura needs no further justification; it becomes
autonomous and requires new methods of design and new
materials; the picture is pasted over with paper or sprinkled
with sand. Finally, the use of cardboard, wood, sheet metal,
etc., has become common."24 Concurring with the artists and
his fellow Opoiaz members, Shklovskii defined faktura as the
essential characteristic of art in general in his article "O fakture
i kontr-rel'efakh" ("On Faktura and Counter-Reliefs"):
"Faktura is the main distinguishing feature of the particular
world of specially constructed things which in their entirety
we call art . . . The work of the artist-poet and the artist-
painter ultimately aims at creating a permanent object that is
tangible in all its details, a faktura object."25 Shklovskii cites
Tatlin's and Al'tman's material compositions as the most
convincing examples of his definition of art. Suprematism, on
the other hand, belongs to the "Symbolist school of painting"
and is "essentially 'ideal' painting" since it strives to symbolize
ideas through colors and abstract shapes instead of emphasizing
the properties of the material and thereby differentiating and
intensifying the tangible values of faktura.
The non-objective artists including Rodchenko and
Stepanova shared this negative attitude toward the ideal, even
metaphysical, symbolism of the Suprematists and especially of
Malevich. After the opening of the Tenth State Exhibition,
Stepanova wrote in her diary on April 29, 1919: "The only
compromise admitted there is Suprematism. It would have
been better to exclude it and exhibit only non-objective art."
Rodchenko sang the same tune in his statement in the
exhibition catalogue, where he compared his invention of
colorless, black faktura with Columbus's discovery of the New
World while belittling Malevich as the philosopher of an ism:
"The death knell has sounded for color painting and now the
last ism is being laid to eternal rest . . ,"26
At that point, Shklovskii had not seen Rodchenko's black
faktura paintings but his definition perfectly applies to their
uncompromising gesture. In their radical concentration on
faktura, their total exclusion of all other painterly values such
as color, light, volume, and space, and their reduction of form
to the edge of perceptibility, these paintings suddenly revealed
the power of negation. The increasing concern with faktura as a
design element in Russian avant-garde painting since 1912
assumed a completely new quality after Rodchenko's black
paintings had demonstrated the practical and aesthetic
consequences of the faktura concept: The picture lost its
symbolic character; it became an object.
This sharp distinction between the artistic object and the
symbolic picture led many contemporaries, as well as present-
day scholars such as Rainer Griibel or Benjamin Buchloh, to
the assumption that the faktura object was completely devoid
of any outside references. Such interpretations see the reified
work stripped of all meaning that transcends the self-
referentiality of an index sign pointing to the qualities of its
own material and making. It is true that some of Rodchenko's
own statements suggest a reduction of Wis faktura paintings to
the function of a self-referential sign. After all, he occasionally
describes them as signs of his choice of materials, i.e., black
paint, and as traces of his painting technique. But this
disregard for all further references has a deliberate polemical
edge to it. In the historical context of their creation, the
meaning of the faktura objects was constituted by their very
negation of all the emotional expressive qualities and ideal
references that had bogged down the painting of the previous
decades and distracted it from its essential nature.
This negation of tradition was, however, precisely defined.
Traditional values were not simply rejected. They were
replaced by new products which introduced new, not yet
conventionalized codes of perception. In the catalogue of the
Tenth State Exhibition, Rodchenko assembled — under the
heading "Rodchenko's System" — quotations that expounded
upon his black paintings. With statements like "That I destroy
myself only shows that I exist" (Max Stirner) or "What
invigorates life invigorates death" (Walt Whitman) he tried to
prove that the rebirth of life relied on death as its necessary
prerequisite. In this sense, the literary quotations are
metaphors of the black faktura objects. Standing on the border
between the old, dead art and a new, living art, the real things
deal the pictorial illusions the deathblow.
Rodchenko's choice of anarchist writers like Max Stirner
was not an accident. There are numerous indications that
Rodchenko, nicknamed "Anti" by his friends, conceived of the
black paintings as an explicitly anarchist answer to the ruling
art. Since Courbet, artists have time and again used the color
black to express anarchistic views, even if their works did not
explicitly refer to the intended symbolic content. We have
already mentioned Rodchenko's active involvement in the
Moscow Association of Anarchist Groups. In the April 28, 1918,
issue of Anarchy, he published his first theoretical text, a brief
analysis of his experiments with shapes and colors entitled
"The Dynamism of the Plane." In this article as well as in
"Everything Is Experiment," he repeatedly used the term
"expressive means," although without specifying what a
painting "absorbed in itself (in Stepanova's words) was
supposed to express.
There is an astoundingly symbolic self-portrait of
Rodchenko, painted in 1920 during the most radical phase of
the liberation of his painting from all references. An egg-
shaped, bald head rises from a turtleneck sweater. A hexagonal
rhombus, overlaid by a large deep-black disc, covers half the
wide-open eyes and the entire forehead. Is this strangely
stigmatized face an affirmation of the color black as a symbol
of anarchism or rather an affirmation of anarchistic
individualism as propagated in "Rodchenko's System"? In this
case the black paintings could be read as an "expression" of this
affirmation. In a review of the Tenth State Exhibition, Lissitzky
called Rodchenko an "individualist" who had started "the shift
to the new materiality" with his black paintings.27
Such an interpretation of the faktura paintings leads one to
wonder how Rodchenko and the future Constructivists could
have abandoned this individualist, anarchistic attitude toward
art and life in favor of the collectivist ideology of
Constructivism, which negated not only the individual but
also the role of intuition in the creative act, feeling, faktura,
and material. In their stead, Constructivism postulated the
system of forms, the nonmaterial line, the logically planned
structure, the rational creative method, and the calculated
effect.
In "The Line," Rodchenko described the artistic course he
had taken after 1918 as a logical sequence of problems in the
treatment of paint, and solutions through the invention of new
painting techniques. The artist saw these "inventions of new
discoveries" as an evolution taking place strictly within art, a
kind of expedition into painting's uncharted territories which
had previously been barred by tasks alien to art. What he did
not mention was the possibility of art's evolutionary course
being motivated, much less determined by, external societal
310
tasks as Brik had outlined them in Art of the Commune.
It took a number of developmental factors, both within and
outside art, to move the Moscow Constructivists grouped
around Rodchenko along the way that led from individually
composed faktura works to useful Constructivist "objects." It
should be emphasized that I regard this development as only
one possible way among "several theoretically conceivable
evolutionary courses" pointed out by Iurii Tynianov and
Jakobson in the journal LefiLeft Front of the Arts) in 1928. l8 The
transition from the black faktura studies to functionally
planned constructions cannot be sufficiently explained by
certain "immanent laws" in the evolution of artistic materials
and methods, even though the Constructivists liked to give
their own genesis this stamp of finality. Nor can the historical
circumstances provide a comprehensive answer. Only by
"analyzing the correlation between the [artistic] sequence and
other historical sequences" can the "question of the concrete
choice of course" be clarified. This approach, propounded by
Jakobson and Tynianov for art in general, should specifically be
applied to the development of Russian Constructivism.
The Universe of the Line
Critical decisions on the road to Constructivism were made
between the Tenth State Exhibition in April 1919, where
Rodchenko first showed his black paintings, and the opening
of the Nineteenth State Exhibition on October 2, 1920, to
which he contributed fifty-seven works, most of them from his
most recent, Linearist phase. With the introduction of the
autonomous line as a new element in painting, Rodchenko
took a crucial step toward Constructivism, replacing paint
with the line as the essence of painting. Probably inspired by
Kandinskii's article "O linii" ("On the Line," 1919)/''
Rodchenko began to explore the qualities of the line in several
dozen non-objective pencil drawings (some made using a ruler,
some not) in April and March 1919. In August, only a few
months after the faktura paintings, he executed ten purely
linear black-and-white paintings from the pencil sketches.
The same month, he wrote in his notebook: "I have begun to
paint canvases with linear themes . . . They will be unusual and
new . . . Certainly I will draw a lot of criticism for my lines.
People will say there is no painting without brushstrokes. But
I see my task differently. Color has died in black and become
irrelevant. Let the brushstroke die too."
In the exhibition, Rodchenko hung the pages of
"Everything Is Experiment" alongside his linear paintings.
The text presents the artist's non-objective work of previous
years as a development that follows "immanent laws," with the
painter solving "tasks" that result from formal experiments
with the "line" and "paint." "The composition of the one (the
line) and the faktura of the other (paint) constitute the value of
painting and consequently amount to the discovery of painting
itself." Despite the equality of line and paint suggested in
this statement, the painter, in the course of his preoccupation
with the line, is "confronted" with the question, "Is faktura a
value in itself or does it only serve to intensify more
fundamental tasks of the work? I believe the latter to be the
case . . . Otherwise two works are created in one, one with its
own intrinsic tasks and the other simply the pleasure of the
surface. Together they become blurred in the distance and do
not enhance the value of the whole."
Along with color and faktura, Rodchenko deliberately
banishes the visual and haptic "pleasure" of surface attractions
from painting. This amounts to a fundamental decision as to
the intended reception of art. Hedonistic enjoyment and
contemplative absorption in surface details are summarily
rejected in favor of a rational perception of the line
construction's economical form and functional implementation
of "intrinsic tasks." Straight lines are the most economical
means to build constructions; anything that conceals the
construction is superfluous, anticonstructive, dysfunctional.
With the drastic turn horn faktura to the line, a necessary if
not quite sufficient step toward merely functionalist painting
had been taken. To transform the autonomous linear painting
into a functional object, Linearism still had to pass through
various stages:
•From the planar linear composition to the spatial line
construction
•From the spatial line construction in the picture to the
three-dimensional construction in the picture space
•From the economical structure and inner functionality of
the plastic but autonomous spatial construction to the
fulfillment of an external purpose by the constructed
object
The shift from the flat line paintings of the first phase with
their unstable picture space of intersecting straight lines and
circles to the linear structures within the picture space
beginning in late 1919 was certainly inspired by Rodchenko 's
cooperation with the architects of Zhivskul'ptarkh (the
Synthesis of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture
Commission). He joined this association of painters, architects,
and sculptors, who strove for a fusion of their fields, on
November 18, 1919. The architectural tasks of the association
soon prompted the painter to develop his flat linear
compositions into tectonic constructions built solely of lines.
Despite their architectonics, Rodchenko 's linear structures —
such as the 1919 sketches of kiosks (plate no. 115) or the
sketches for the Soviet of Deputies building (plate no. 653) — as
well as the projects of the architects Nikolai Ladovskii and
Vladimir Krinskii, the sculptor Boris Korolev, and the painter
Aleksandr Shevchenko, show the characteristics of an exploded
order. The planned instability of the buildings with their
hazardously projecting structural parts, leaning pillars, and
precariously balanced girders; the dissolution of spatial blocks;
the breaking up of the traditional rectangular framework; the
displacement and penetration of irregularly shaped walls; and
the confusing mixture of Constructivist ornament and
tectonically functional form resulted in architectural collages
rather than coherent complexes and in a discontinuously
enclosed space. It is not without reason that these designs are
frequently cited as precursors of Deconstructivist architecture.
Amid the revolutionary fervor of 1919—20, the parts were
apparently still emancipated from the organizing structures
and strictures of the whole. The designs of Rodchenko and
other members of Zhivskul'ptarkh demonstrate an architecture
of articulated conflicts and inner clashes that often goes to the
limit of structural feasibility. Only at the end of the 1920s
would functionalism introduce a new harmonizing unity into
the architectural structure and subordinate the parts to a
flexible architectonic framework.
Despite their Deconstructivist configuration, the
architectural designs with their spatial, linear structures
introduced a new phase in the defining of what constituted a
work of art that ultimately led to Constructivism. Standing at
the forefront of this development, Rodchenko was first as
isolated as he had feared when he developed his Linearism.
Looking back, in October 1920, at the exhibition of his line
paintings, he wrote in his diary: "At the time none of the
artists perceived them as paintings, but by the end of 1920 and
the beginning of 1921 the first imitators of my art appeared on
the scene. Many said the line as a system had opened their eyes
to the essence of construction."
It took several more external factors to prompt the
311
development from line constructions to the methodically
structured "system" of Constructivism. The series of
discussions among the artists at Inkhuk was one of those
factors.
Inkhuk — The Factory of Objectivity
Rodchenko's discoveries in painting gained a broader audience
when shortly after the exhibition of his line paintings, in early
November 1920, he was appointed head of a "parallel"
organizing committee of Inkhuk, which had been formed in
opposition to the existing committee under Kandinskii.
After dramatic arguments between Kandinskii's and
Rodchenko's followers about the tasks and programs of
Inkhuk, Kandinskii and his supporters left the Institute for
good on January 21, 1921. This also ended the two-year
friendship between him and Rodchenko and Stepanova — the
three artists had worked and lived together in Kandinskii's
house from September 1919 until the autumn of 1920. But
while they had collaborated to prepare the Nineteenth State
Exhibition in October 1920, Kandinskii's expressive
abstractionism and the objective outlook of Rodchenko's
Constructivism had proved irreconcilable. Even peaceful
coexistence seemed impossible in those days of struggle for a
new art (although Brik had proposed cooperation). On
February 4, 1921, the committee under Rodchenko was
officially confirmed. The line represented by him and the
committee members Brik, Briusova, Aleksei Babichev,
Krinskii, Popova, and Stepanova had been victorious.
Not only the committee but also the General Working
Group of Objective Analysis at Inkhuk was under Rodchenko's
direction. The group counted among its members almost all
the future Constructivists in Moscow. Even Malevich and
Lissitzky made the long trip from Vitebsk to present Unovis's
programs and work at Inkhuk. But the Working Group found
little common ground with them or with Tatlin, who in 1919
had moved from Moscow to Petrograd (where he would work
at the Museum of Artistic Culture/Ginkhuk [the State
Institute of Artistic Culture]). No fruitful cooperation ever
developed with either Vitebsk or Petrograd. The ideological
differences were too glaring.
Between its formation on November 23, 1920, and May
1921, the General Working Group of Objective Analysis held
twenty-eight sessions. In contrast to the analyses of the
psychological and physiological effects of artworks of all types
planned in Kandinskii's Inkhuk program, the group's program
emphasized the "objective analysis of works of art" so as to
clarify and define the primary and secondary elements of
painting, sculpture, architecture, and so on, as well as their
laws of organization, specifically the structural laws of
"construction" and "rhythm." These laws were to be
analytically "laid bare" — a term obviously borrowed from the
Formalists. Characteristically, "emotion" and "representation"
were ranked among the secondary elements of art to be
analyzed, whereas Kandinskii's program had drawn upon the
"analysis of artistic means of expression" and their "effects on
the human psyche." In opposition to this subjective
understanding of works of art as expressive signs, the group's
program perceived them as objects devoid of individual artistic
expression, hence not requiring any psychological empathy on
the part of the viewer but rather an empirical, behavioristic
analysis of his own physiological responses in order to
apprehend the objects' effects. To implement their program,
the Working Group held numerous sessions between January
and April 1921, discussing the "analysis of the terms
'construction' and 'composition' and their respective
definition." At the same time, works by Western painters such
as Monet, Signac, and Matisse; by older Russian artists like
Abram Arkhipov, Konstantin Korovin, Aleksandr Kuprin, Petr
Konchalovskii, and Kandinskii; and by Suprematists and non-
objectivists (Ekster, Klutsis, Malevich, Medunetskii,
Rodchenko, Stepanova, and Tatlin) were analyzed to determine
their Constructivist content.
The artists and theorists did not enter into these discussions
with a clear, let alone a unanimous, definition of "composition"
and "construction" and the difference between them. They
began by analyzing individual works and tried to reduce the
observations and evaluations of the group members, recorded
in countless minutes, to a common denominator. By way of
empirical induction, they hoped to find an objective definition
of the term "construction."
Despite this effort at an inductive approach, the recorded
results with their interim solutions, as well as the drawings
made to illustrate the difference between composition and
construction (plate nos. 244-253), show the outlines of a
preconceived notion of "construction" which was clearly
inspired by Rodchenko's line paintings. It is therefore not
surprising that at the end of these sessions only Rodchenko's
works were deemed "constructive" since they alone had
completely replaced composition with construction.
Rodchenko was more guarded, describing his black and line
paintings as "striving for construction."
In the course of these "objective" analyses and
terminological clarifications a general tendency to systematize
and rationalize artistic creation became apparent. In
Rodchenko's definition of "construction," its systemic character
plays an important role: "Every system of construction requires
the specific use of its own material, and every such system will
be the invention or the perfecting of something, and not a
reflection or portrayal."'0
Constructions
In his hanging spatial constructions, Rodchenko for the first
time consistently demonstrated the systemic character of
construction in an aesthetically convincing manner. Each of the
five — a square, a hexagon (plate no. 296), an oval (plate no.
294), a circle, and a triangle — was constructed of a single sheet
of plywood. The artist cut the sheets in concentric bands of
equal width and tilted them into space to create three-
dimensional bodies that were not constituted of physical mass
but of linear, uniform geometric figures. Like paintings, these
constructions could not stand on their own and were therefore
suspended from the ceiling — which emphasized their
autonomy as monadic, nonutilitarian entities.
It would be an understatement of the facts to consider these
constructions mere signs of Rodchenko's transition from
painting to sculpture. Such an assessment would ignore the
origins of construction in painting. Only the negation of
painterliness explains the hanging construction's anti-
individualist, universal geometric form, reproducibility, and
independence from an individual creator or specific material
that earlier on would have born the hallmark of the artist's
faktura. The uniformly smooth silver paint emphasizes the
absence of any surface faktura and evokes the impression of
immateriality and weightlessness. The hanging spatial
constructions hold no secrets. Their design is completely
transparent and rational. The basic elements of painting —
surface and color — have been transformed into movement and
light. The metallic sheen of their surface underscores the
disembodied effect of the hanging constructions (or "reflecting
surfaces," as Rodchenko sometimes described them). Paint and
the canvas or wooden surface of painting have been literally
dissected and dissolved, and the destruction of matter gives
birth to the pure construction as a reconstruction of the
objective world according to the artist's plan.
312
Rodchenko created his series of hanging constructions
between late 1920 and early 1921 while also working on a
number of other wood constructions based on the principle of
repetition of a single form. In these works, identical elements
such as wooden rods or boards of equal measurements are
assembled into three-dimensional constructions that are
symmetrically arranged around a center. Like the hanging
constructions, these smaller-scale constructions dispense with
faktura, individual variations, and so forth. Rather, they are an
exercise in combinatory rules to show that even uniform
material elements can produce a variety of aesthetically
satisfying constructions. The material plays only a minor role
in the combinatory method. The construction follows the
methods of building elementary structural systems and not the
material. Rodchenko remarked: "I experimentally developed
these most recent constructions to bind the constructor to the
law of functionality of forms and their relationships and to
demonstrate the universal principle that all sorts of
constructions of different systems, types, and applications can
be built from identical shapes."
Built on the principle of identical shapes and axially
symmetrical shifts, these constructions are results of an ars
combinatoria which experimentally explores and demonstrates
the methods of the creation of forms. The construction method
and the resulting system of forms are paramount while faktura
and material play an inferior role. At this point, the
functionality of the construction is still defined from within
the system: a form is functional because it defines the other
forms in the system and determines their function, not because
it can be used to fulfill tasks outside the system. These
constructions are hence functionally structured in themselves
but their elements have no other function than to constitute
this structure. The structure itself remains without any
utilitarian function — while positively asserting its aesthetic
function.
One conspicuous hallmark of the most advanced
constructions of 1921 is their systemic character: a radically
economic structure of uniform elements and homogeneous
materials which can be arranged in various combinations that
are consistently functional within the system. This systemic
conception of construction differs considerably from the
meaning given to the term in the discussions about
construction versus composition where "construction" had
primarily denoted architectural design and stability. This
rather literal, easy-to-grasp notion of constructiveness is
reflected in most constructions from the so-called "laboratory"
phase of Constructivism, including the constructions of Tatlin,
Vasilii Ermilov, Medunetskii, Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg,
Naum Gabo, and Katarzyna Kobro, as well as some of Klutsis's
and Rodchenko 's constructions. None of these works display
the systemic character defined by Rodchenko, for their formal
elements are neither consistently uniform and homogeneous
nor are they organized according to a rational combinatory
method. Besides Rodchenko's hanging constructions and small
wood constructions, only a few constructions and sketches by
Klutsis and a number of Ioganson's constructions conform with
the ideal of a systematic structure.
At the exhibition of Obmokhu (the Society of Young
Artists) in May -June 1921, Ioganson presented some of the
most individual and convincing constructions in the entire
show. The six works, which have survived only in photographs,
are constructed of pieces of squared timber arranged mostly at
square but also at acute and obtuse angles. Three spatial
constructions, exhibited side by side to emphasize the principle
of variation, each consisted of identical wooden pieces which
intersected in the center of the construction at varying angles.
The skeletal structures were held together by wire or rope,
which braced the ends of the wooden pieces for maximum
countertension and overall stability. They were tilted to the
side so that they rested on three vertices, which gave the
structures a strong dynamic effect and made them appear much
more complex than they actually were. Two other spatial
constructions on triangular pedestals also had rectangular
structures, with the formal elements symmetrically arranged
around the center of each construction.
Ioganson's Study in Balance (ca. 1920), also shown at the
Obmokhu exhibition, was organized according to the same
method as the spatial constructions. Three movable rods,
connected by rope, were mounted above a triangular base slab.
By pulling the rope, the rods could be arranged in different
configurations to change the entire structure.
These structures, made of standardized elements and
homogeneous materials and rendered transformative through
variable central connections or kinetic mounting, were
exemplary models of Ioganson's concept of the "mechanical
construction." Charts with two lines crossing at right or acute
and obtuse angles served Ioganson to illustrate a thesis he
presented at Inkhuk on March 9, 1922: "The design of every
cold structure in space or any combination of hard material is a
cross with right angles (or) with acute and obtuse angles."
With these drawings, Ioganson struck the balance of his
previous work. At the end of his lecture, he summarized his
own artistic development as a logical and necessary sequence:
"From painting to sculpture, from sculpture to construction,
from construction to technology and invention — that is the
course I have chosen and I am sure it will also be the ultimate
direction of every revolutionary artist."
In 1924, Ioganson gave up art in favor of technology and
began to work in a rolling mill — not as an ordinary technician
but as an "inventor" of design methods which he tried to
translate from his sculptures to the construction of utilitarian
objects. He contrasted the methods of "mechanical
construction" and "invention" developed in his spatial
constructions with the "unimaginative" and "stagnating"
technology of the period — but also with "the procedures,
methods, techniques, materials, and tools of art," which he
considered "useless, flawed, primitive, and extremely
insufficient" for the design of the future. Championing a
rationally calculated design method, he polemically attacked
Tatlin's selections of materials as well as the Suprematist
compositions by Malevich and his Unovis followers for their
intuitive treatment of material and unsystematic design. In
their failure to progress beyond the methods of the "old art,"
these artists — in Ioganson's view — relapsed into a "wrong and
noxious form of construction, i.e., into the 'good old art' or
into mere playfulness."
In his lecture at Inkhuk, Ioganson stressed that the
innovative, transformable "mechanical" construction was
nothing but the "thing" itself, "organized according to
Constructivist principles." Therefore it had "no existence
above, below, or beyond the thing." Ioganson was thus the first
to postulate the principle of concrete art and minimal art: that
the work of art is a structured thing, i.e., the material
implementation of a systematically designed structure that is
transformable within the limits of its own system.
Accordingly, the spatial construction is merely a self-
explication of its methodically organized intrinsic structure.
Ioganson drew the necessary conclusions from this
reification of art when he attempted to apply his originally
artistic design method to the "invention" of industrial
products. This created an entirely new situation as the
structure now had to meet utilitarian requirements outside its
own system — which basically amounted to a return to the
"theme" or "content" of the old art in the new guise of
313
utilitarian function. Only for one fleeting historic moment did
the liberation of art from representational and expressive
functions lead to its complete autonomy. The immanent
functionality of systematically organized material was soon
replaced by the external function of serving a "social task," as
Brik put it. With the demand for the practical usefulness of
artistic constructions, the spiritual effects of the newborn
autonomous structural system were criticized as merely
aesthetic. This was not a time for concrete or minimal art to
flourish.
When the technological and industrial modernization of
the Russian society set in with full force in 1920, the vanguard
artists had to live up to their progressive self-image. The most
radical ones renounced the principle of autonomy and plunged
into the current of modernization, convinced that their
"professional" artistic skills would enable them to influence its
course. But once they had left the position of critical observers,
they soon had to recognize that they were insufficiently
equipped and trained to withstand the danger of drowning in
the rough waves of progress. At best, the artists, like everyone
else, became travelers in the inexorable stream of accumulation
and utilization, unable to diagnose and demonstrate its
motives and casualties.
The Obmokhu exhibition in 1921 had presented Ioganson's
spatial constructions as well as Rodchenko's hanging
constructions to the public for the first time. Both artists were
members of the First Working Group of Constructivists at
Inkhuk, which had been founded only a few weeks before.
Ioganson and Rodchenko exhibited as guest artists since,
unlike the Stenberg brothers and Medunetskii — who had also
contributed works to the show — they did not belong to
Obmokhu. In this fascinating, historically momentous
exhibition, three types of constructions can be distinguished:
1. Ioganson's and Rodchenko's purely structural
combinations or "cold" constructions, as Ioganson described
them.
2. The "warm" constructions based on materials and not on
a structural system. These include, to a certain extent, the
Stenbergs' reliefs, but primarily Medunetskii's sculptures. His
constructions focus on the aesthetic and constructive qualities
of the material, which are heightened through contrasting
forms and faktura. His Spatial Construction (plate no. 282), in
particular, has pronounced "painterly" qualities with the red
finish of the curved iron rod and the use of different colored
metal parts. Medunetskii's other constructions, displayed on a
table-like base at the exhibition, are also combinations of
different materials with contrasting surfaces and textures. He
predominantly used semifinished forged or industrially
processed metal products but also found objects such as a
plowshare, the metal handle of a pitcher, or a slat from a piece
of furniture. During the reconstruction of these works it
became apparent how much the curved or twisted forms were
determined by the properties of the material, its strength,
flexibility, and thickness. The form and faktura of the
construction result from a synthesis of the artist's abstract
formal and spatial vision, his intuitive, sometimes arbitrary,
choice of materials according to "painterly" and "constructive"
criteria, and the inherent properties of these materials.
Symbolic references are, however, absent from these
constructions — unless one is willing to read the parabolas and
hyperbolas, which also recur in Medunetskii's paintings, as
signs of the curvature of space-time (an interpretation that
actually fits the same geometric forms in the works of
Malevich, Klutsis, or Lissitzky).
3. The symbolic constructions by Georgii and Vladimir
Stenberg. Constructed from the "materials of the new
Classicism" — glass and iron — and set on rather
unconventionally shaped pedestals, these "constructions of
spatial structures" (plate nos. 291—293) represent "ideas" such as
modernity, industrial revolution, and technological progress.
These abstract structures were so close to their referents that
critics gave them the label of "technological naturalism." The
artists rejected this symbolic reading of their constructions,
which they claimed were merely economically and functionally
organized objects. Like Ioganson and Rodchenko, they tried to
exclude the subjective effects of faktura from their
constructions. All planes of their constructions were clear
glass, a material that by its very smoothness, hardness, and
transparency negates faktura.
What unites all these different constructions in the
exhibition is the rhythm of their structures. In their programmatic
and theoretical texts of 1920-22, all Soviet Constructivists
unanimously declared rhythm the most important organizing
principle and effect of their constructions. Given the three
artistic positions toward structure, material, and symbolic
function outlined above, it is not surprising that in the
following years the Stenberg brothers made a successful career
for themselves in the Soviet Union, first in the theater (plate
nos. 642—645) and later as the country's most significant and
sought-after designers of film posters (plate nos. 426-430). The
synthesis of pictorial symbolization and decorative structure
required in these media is clearly present in the brothers'
constructions. Medunetskii, too, successfully progressed from
his "painterly" material constructions to set designs for the
avant-garde theater, while Ioganson and Rodchenko continued
to experiment and develop their design methods and systems.
The 1921 Obmokhu exhibition was arguably the
culmination of the short history of Constructivist object art.
Soon after the opening of the show, the theorists of "production
art" as well as the artists themselves came to regard the
innovative but still autonomous constructions as studies in
Productivist aesthetics rather than independent contributions
to Constructivist art. The term "laboratory experiment" was
coined as early as 1921; it downgraded the constructions in the
Obmokhu exhibition and relegated Constructivist works to the
status of basic research for future practical applications, thereby
robbing them of any significance of their own which might
have been worth pursuing.
After the materiological and methodological phases of
Constructivism, and at the end of the search for "construction"
in the artistic creations of the past and present, technological
issues and functional demands increasingly determined the
artistic discourse and the definition of Constructivism at
Inkhuk. Rodchenko's own concluding definition, delivered in
March 1921 toward the end of the discussions of the distinction
between composition and construction, reads:
Construction is a thing or a task that is approached with a precise
working schedule and in which all materials and all their specific
components are organized and used according to their correct functions
without adding anything superfluous. The correct approach to each
space is construction.
Construction is: goal — working plan — organization — material —
economy.
New things can be created only if there is Constructivist
organization . . . Composition is always an expression of
individualism and everything individualism implies.
Constructivism arose from the criticism of the individualist
compositional art of the past and immediate present and saw
itself as its direct negation. Malevich and Tatlin were among
those who had to face some heavy attacks. In Rodchenko's
critical view, the Suprematist compositions were capable only
of "filling empty spaces in an individualist manner," while
314
Tatlin in his counter-reliefs confined himself to selecting from
available materials. "When [an artist] selects such materials as
are at hand or fills an empty space with decorations, it is
composition."
For Rodchenko, any kind of construction, whether on a
surface or in space, in art or technology, requires a precise
hierarchy and sequence of functions: after determining the
"goal," i.e., the function of the construction, a working
schedule is developed, which specifies the procedures and tools
for reaching the goal; then the appropriate material is selected
and processed and used as economically as possible.
From Individualist Anarchism to Technological
Rationalism
This "evolutionary course" of artistic production toward anti-
individualist systematization, rationalization, and
mechanization was neither predictable before the
Constructivist debates at Inkhuk began nor a natural result of
these discussions. The decision in favor of collectivism had
been preceded by the individualist anarchism of the black
faktura paintings, which had convincingly embodied the
concept of the work of art as an object and were closely
connected with Rodchenko s belief in the principles of Stirner
and Whitman. Moreover, his definition of construction was in
glaring contrast to his affirmation of "abstract spiritual
creativity" in January 1919 and his advocacy of Eastern over
Western art during the planning of the Museum of Painterly
Culture in March 1919: "Asiatic art is spiritual, was regarded
with religious awe . . . The West treats art lightly, in material
terms; the East worships art, elevates it above everything else,
does not make it utilitarian.""
Similarly, Stepanova's statements of 1919-20 are
diametrically opposed to the definitions and evaluations of
composition and construction she gave but a short time later.
In the catalogue of the Tenth State Exhibition she still praised
"intuition" and "emotion" as positive values, explicitly calling
the work of non-objective artists a "protest of the spirit against
the materialism of the present."'2 As late as October 1920, in
her manifesto "On the Possibilities of the Cognition of Art,"
written on the occasion of the Nineteenth State Exhibition, she
defended the "miraculous" — in the sense of a transcendent
quality — as an essential characteristic of art. At the same time,
she strongly objected to the equation of mathematics and art:
"The Formalist approach now being pursued in art is a tribute
to the materialism of our time. But none of us will ever
subordinate art to mathematics." The concept of the "artist-
proletarian" as executor of objective "tasks" was still anathema
to her. She considered the "starting point," "the creative
impulse" to be as yet undiscovered and therefore to constitute
something "incomprehensible," a "miracle" that could not be
reduced to the calculated execution of a rationally formulated
task.
A year later, on December 22, 1921, she delivered her talk
"On Constructivism" at Inkhuk:
This revolutionary, destructive activity, which strips art down to
its basic elements, has shocked the consciousness of those who work in
art: it has confronted them with the problem of construction as an
expedient necessity. Based on the further principle of the expedient
implementation of work, a new Constructivist ideology has been
formulated.
Being aware of this new activity is particularly important.
Subconscious inspiration {a fortuitous phenomenon) is transformed into
organized activity.
The intellect is our point of departure, taking the place of the
"soul" of idealism.
From this it follows that, on the whole. Constructivism is also
intellectual production (and not thought alone), incompatible with the
spirituality of artistic activity. "
How did this conversion from transcendentalism to intellectual
rationalism come about? What prompted the abrupt turnabout
from the rejection of functional tasks even within art to an
organized implementation of practical purposes?
A sudden revelation cannot have been the only cause. So
how can we explain this ideological and aesthetic about-face,
which was soon followed by a change of paradigms in artistic
practice: from the substance of paint to the immaterial
structure, from the Deconstructivist jumble of lines to the
planned, clear-cut organizing system? The discovery of the line
as an independent constructive factor and the transition from
faktura to Linearism do not suffice in themselves to elucidate
the radical change of values from individualism to collectivism,
from spiritualism to materialism, from non-utilitarian
thinking to the principle of usefulness, from the
incomprehensible "miracle" to the cogent intellectual system,
and from imagination and intuition to logical calculation and
mathematics.
There were a number of critical external developments,
beginning in 1919, that contributed to the sharp swerve in the
"evolutionary course" of art between 1920 and 1921. The
enhanced institutional powers of the Soviet government after
the end of the Civil War in the autumn of 1920 intensified the
crisis in art which had been smoldering since the February
Revolution.
Art of the Commune was forcibly closed in April 1919 and in
September Iskusstvo (Art), the journal of Izo Narkompros, had
to cease publication. The largely autonomous Professional
Union of Artists and Painters was dissolved in December 1919.
Several of its members — including Kandinskii, Rodchenko,
and Stepanova — went on to found Inkhuk in order to protect
the professional interests of artists. Under these circumstances,
the formation of Inkhuk can hardly be considered a success of
the avant-garde. On the contrary: after the dissolution and
reorganization of Izo Narkompros in December 1920— early
1921, which cost the avant-garde most of its influence on the
country's artistic life, Inkhuk became the vanguard artists' last
refuge in Moscow.
The administrative autonomy of the artists was effectually
stamped out. To make matters worse, on December 1, 1920,
Pravda published a "Letter of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party on the Proletkul't Organizations" that
lumped the "Futurists" together with those "decadent
elements" and "followers of an idealistic philosophy hostile to
Marxism" who had exerted a "subversive influence" on Izo
Narkompros as well as on the Proletkul't organizations. For
this reason, both Izo Narkompros and Proletkul't had to be
dissolved as autonomous organizations and put under the close
control of the People's Commissariat of Enlightenment. In
January 1921, Lunacharskii found it necessary to caution against
a public "witch hunt" that would make the "Futurists" and
non-objective artists "martyrs in the name of their ideas."
Finally, in early 1921, the avant-garde lost its last institutional
stronghold when the Museum Department led by Rodchenko,
Kandinskii, and Tatlin was dissolved. Looking back at these
hard times, Brik wrote: "The 'Futurists' were seriously
committed to destroying the past and tried to use their
positions within the administration for this purpose. They did
not succeed. The guardians of philistinism proved to be
stronger and threw the 'Futurists' out of all the commissariats."
By early 1921, with this chain of defeats, the influence that
the anarchist avant-garde had on official art policy was at an
end. Politically on the defensive and deprived of their
organizational clout, avant-garde artists had to rethink their
315
role and place in society for the third time, after the first crisis
following the February Revolution and the second following
October 1917.
A desperately defiant statement Maiakovskii made in the
winter of 1920 reveals what this crisis meant for the individual
artist: "We declare: to hell with individualism, to hell with
words and emotions ... so that we can even renounce our own
personality . . . the poet can't be forced but he can force
himself."
It was only now, three years after the Revolution, that the
necessity of again redefining their role led the avant-garde to
lock arms with technology and industrial production as the
political-social revolution mutated into an industrial
revolution. The most advanced artists kept up with this
change. Artistic Modernism took the way of modernization —
with the Constructivists in the lead. They marched along with
the first "utopian" endeavors to industrialize the Soviet Union
after the Revolution.
In December 1920, the Soviet government tackled the
implementation of the Goelro (the State Commission for the
Electrification of Russia) plan, which envisioned huge energy
projects as the basis of the reconstruction and expansion of
Russia's shattered economy and industry. Lenin, the moving
force behind this plan, stressed its far-reaching implications for
the future of Soviet society. His response to a question from the
correspondent of the English Daily Express has often been
quoted: "Electrification on the basis of the Soviet order will
lead to the final victory of the foundations of Communism in
our country, the foundations of a civilized life without
exploiters, without capitalists, without landowners, without
merchants." By the end of 1920, the electrification project was
the talk of the day. The electrified Utopia not only captured the
minds and imaginations of economists and technicians but
seduced artists as well, who gave free rein to visions of a fully
mechanized and electrified life after the icy, dark winters of the
war years. In 1920, for example, Klutsis created his first
photomontage: a photograph of Lenin between the dark circle
of the "old world" full of prisons, alcohol, and whips and the
bright "new world" with the crystal cubes of Suprematist
architecture. These buildings of the new world are inscribed
with the word "electrification." (See also his study, from the
same year, for the poster, Elektrifikatsiia vsei strany
[Electrification of the Entire Country], plate no. 308.)
Two years later, in 1922, when "production art" began to
venture out into real life, Klutsis was the first among the
Constructivists to design his constructions for practical,
everyday purposes. One of his large-scale projects for
propaganda kiosks included a banner running around the
construction proclaiming, "The development of industry
brings salvation." These agitprop stands were successful models
of the Constructivist concept of "utilitarian" objects. Their
transparent, light framework construction fulfills the principle
of economy. The utilization of all forms for set functions, the
modular structure, and the multi-functional equipment with a
picture screen, loudspeakers, a bookstall, poster holders, a
speaker's rostrum, and so on make these structures convincing
examples of how the Constructivist notion of aesthetics and
function could be put into practice (plate nos. 109, m-113).
In his summary of the Inkhuk members' joint effort to
clarify the term "construction," Babichev wrote on September
5, 1921, that all the Inkhuk artists and theorists had
unanimously concluded
that construction in artistic representation does not exist and that
everything that was previously called construction or pretended to be
construction belonged to an outwardly aesthetic order. Genuine
construction appears only in perfect, utilitarian products. This
conclusion coincided with a sudden, forceful awareness of the future of
industry, which so far has managed without artists and threatened to
fill everything with purely utilitarian buildings and objects that were
completely unresolved as to their ability to orient perception.
The prospect of participating in the organization of life by
organizing objects, buildings, and institutions was inspiring. In the
discussion it was generally held that there was no acceptable reason to
distinguish between the terms "artistic" and "utilitarian" if the object
in question is constructed throughout.
This account neatly sums up the essential characteristics of
the Constructivist object in its final utilitarian metamorphosis.
The extremely high standards implied in the definition are
striking: the object must be "perfect" both in appearance and
substance. Mere surface treatment can result in no more than a
faktura object. Consequently, a Constructivist object is not a
designed surface but a three-dimensional, functional structure
that is distinguished from common utilitarian objects by its
perceptibility, i.e., it keeps stimulating the perception of its
user. Furthermore, the Constructivist object must be
"constructed throughout," meaning that its structure is
systematically designed in all its details and that its body is
identical with this structure.
The ideal Constructivist object in the final Inkhuk
definition is hence a systematically constructed structure that
fulfills a practical purpose and while being used is also
consciously perceived by its consumer. The goal is, in short, a
thing of perfection.
The Resurgence of the Subject
I would argue that the structure of this entirely constructed
object is similar to the structure of human consciousness. If
this is the case, the subject which was driven out of
Constructivism by "objectification" reappeared in the
congruence of object and subject. Its form had changed, of
course, since subjectivity was present in the object not as the
externalization of an empirical subject but in the form of a
transcendental subject.
Ideally, the structure of the Constructivist object is the pure
product of a conscious operation with formal elements,
implemented according to a systematic design method.
Consequently, the finished construction is the materialization
of consciousness in a spatial structure that is unadulterated by
the properties of the materials used.
Rodchenko's hanging spatial constructions as well as
Ioganson's spatial constructions come very close to this
Constructivist ideal. The definition proposed by Babichev
declared absolute awareness in the production of structures to
be the principal criterion of artistic value and usefulness, since
the methodical design and implementation of a construction
made it the product of real work.
This notion of artistic creation as a paradigm of conscious
work is in direct opposition to the earlier view — shared by the
Suprematists and non-objective artists before 1921 — of artistic
production as intuitive creation derived from the unconscious.
The sudden turn had been prepared by the Formalist school
with its conception of art as a method and of artists as
professional masters in their field.
During the formative phase of Suprematism, Malevich
described the relationship between rational thinking and
intuition to Matiushin in a letter of July 3, 1913: "We have
come to a point where we can dismiss the sense and logic of the
old reason. But we must seek to recognize the sense and logic
of a new, already emerging reason which, compared to the old,
might even be a 'supra-reason.'" In his review of the 0.10
exhibition (Petrograd, 1915— 16), Matiushin adopted this
concept of a logic of the unconscious which becomes manifest
316
in non-objective creation and reveals its logical structure to the
viewer; "suprasense" denotes a "new, creative, intuitive reason
that has superseded unenlightened intuition."'4
The Formalist linguists then turned this logic of the
unconscious into an operation, perceiving it not as the
structure of the language of the unconscious but solely as the
procedural logic of the treatment of material. This concept
clearly reflects the analyst's, not the producer's, viewpoint.
For the Constructivist producer, on the other hand, there is
a homologous relationship between the logical structure of his
subconscious and the structure of the construction he creates. If
the structure is completely systematic in its inner logic and
entirely transparent in its making or functional modes, i.e., if
the object is "constructed throughout," it appears as a
homologous model of the producer's unconscious of which he
has become fully aware. The artistic subject becomes as
transparent as his creation. The previously impenetrable dark
of his subconscious and body is illuminated and rendered
transparent through the exposure of the logic of their
functional modes.
When there is nothing remaining unenlightened in the
subject and he has become completely aware of himself, he
controls the language of his unconscious and the mechanisms
of his bodily functions. He is able to organize his unconscious
and his body rationally according to set goals, without having
to heed and follow the demands of his inner voice. This
thought must have struck the Constructivists in 1921 with
sudden force, as Rodchenko's remarks in "The Line" show:
"Until now, life, this simple thing, has not been properly seen;
one did not know that it was so simple and clear, that one
merely needed to organize it and free it from all excess. To
work for life, not for palaces or temples, cemeteries or
museums.""
Transparent to himself, the subject leaves all places of
memory and fate behind; the light of reason has completely
penetrated and exposed them for what they are — the museum
as a place of unresolved desires and petrified experiences, as a
depository of the collective unconscious and memory; the
cemetery as a place of sorrow and surrender of the body and
mind to death; the palace as a place of unenlightened and
consequently false pleasures; the temple as a place of blind
faith, obscure feelings, and nebulous hopes. The self-aware
subject enters into life "to work among, for, and with all
others," i.e., to organize his own, completely transparent life
and the lives of the others through the "constructive
technique."
The methodical, rational organization of formal elements in
a systematically structured construction amounts to a
preparatory model for the organization of life. Since it is
nothing but the visualization of its own conscious creation, it
is structurally akin to the self-reflection of a person's self-
consciousness. Self-consciousness, in the sense of an ego that
has become aware of itself, also knows the division into a
producing subject and a produced object which in itself is a
subject, i.e., the conscious ego. The self, as prior to the
conscious ego, can only recognize itself by reflecting itself in
the ego and thereby delimiting itself the way a frame delimits
a mirror. Only in the delimited form of a conscious and
therefore defined object (the conscious ego) can the self
experience itself as an unlimited and determining subject.
Only by observing itself in the creation of itself can an
individual's self-consciousness recognize, and ultimately
produce, itself.
By the same token, the entirely constructed and transparent
construction observes its own production, or rather its own
finished production, since the Constructivist thing is rendered
conscious throughout but does not have a consciousness of its
own. It thus possesses the structure of self-consciousness
without being conscious.
Only in the mediated identity with the conscious ego — the
"differential indifference" of Post-Structuralism — does the
unconscious or preconscious self produce itself and become
aware of itself as producer. In Rodchenko's hanging spatial
constructions and Ioganson's spatial constructions, this
differential indifference is seen in one object. This object
presents itself as a distinct, systematically constructed and
unified structure, but at the same time it is clearly recognized
as only one variant out of an infinite series of structural
combinations. From this perspective, the unique construction
appears as a contingent unity that would change its structure
under altered conditions.
The absoluteness and monadic unity of the formal elements'
reference system is vividly emphasized by the uniformity of the
construction. Like the structure of pure self-consciousness freed
from the gravity-bound body of the empirical ego, the hanging
spatial constructions hover in space as allegories of the
transcendental ego.
Differential indifference is also strikingly apparent in
Lissitzky's and Klutsis's paintings of constructions. Hovering
freely in the picture space, the axiometric structures have an
effect of differential indifference because each time the viewer
focuses on their identical elements they switch into a spatially
inverse structure and thereby escape fixation. In the viewer's
perception, the opposite spatial constellations thus merge into
one indissoluble unity. The flat axiometric constructions
integrate two or even more views of the same formal
framework into one homogeneous but oscillating structure,
provoking a continuous shift of the viewer's perceptual
positions — which can be experienced as a perpetual alternation
between the self's role as subject and the ego's role as object in
the production of self-consciousness.
In works such as Klutsis's collage Dinamicheskii gorod
(Dynamic City. 1919, plate no. 309) or Lissitzky's Eight-Position
Proun (before 1924), the configuration of the formal elements
remains the same while the optical structure changes
substantially with each incremental turn. The same structural
principle also distinguishes several of Klutsis's drawings of
agitprop kiosks, which at first sight look like rationally
organized construction plans. But a more detailed look reveals
that the spatial relationships are deliberately contradictory:
optical illusions result in "impossible figures" which could
never be transferred from the drawing into real space.
The ambiguity of the two- and three-dimensional
structures was carried over into the designs of multifunctional
objects that became a trademark of Constructivist production
art. The first issue of Lef, the Constructivist house organ from
1923 to 1928, presented works by students of Rodchenko's in
the Metalworking Faculty of Vkhutemas (the Higher Artistic-
Technical Workshops). One of those pieces was a "bed but also
a chair and a desk," since "a thing must perform several
different functions," as the accompanying commentary put it.
The first exhibition of the Metalworking Faculty in 1923
included a number of such multi-functional objects invented
by the students and their teacher. In her account of the
exhibition, Stepanova distinguished three types of objects:
•An object that is fit for use in motion, i.e., organized like a
means of production (for example, a mobile bookcase or
movie theater that can be used anywhere)
•An object that can be dismantled and easily stored after use
(such as a kiosk or bed)
•An object for private use that can fill functions in the
communal apartment (for example, the bed-chair-desk
mentioned above)
317
The concept of multifunctional furniture emerged from the
transformative principle of the hanging spatial constructions
and the constructions made of identical elements. Whether
Ioganson further developed his spatial constructions in this
direction while working in a factory is unknown. Klutsis
employed the constructive principle of planes intersecting at
right angles, which he had developed in his paintings of
"construction," in numerous designs for information stands,
shelf systems, and other functional constructions.
The design and production of multifunctional objects
constituted a major part of the work done in Rodchenko's
workshop in the Metalworking Faculty and to a lesser degree
in the Woodworking Faculty at Vkhutemas throughout the
1920s. The furniture for the reading room of a workers' club,
presented at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des arts decoratifs et
indus triels modernes {International Exhibition of Contemporary
Decorative and Industrial Art) in Paris is a typical example of
this design concept. (In the mid-i920s, Rodchenko also worked
in the Moscow Proletkul't workshop on transformable
furniture for workers' clubs.) The reading room is equipped
with movable bookcases, folding counter tops for multiple use,
revolving drums for photo exhibitions, and a collapsible
construction that includes a speaker's platform, a bulletin
board, and a projection screen for slides and films. Nearly all
the furnishings are "built on a principle that makes it possible
to unfold the object on an ample space for work and to fold it
down into compact proportions after work. Comrade
Rodchenko considers this principle a typical quality of the
modern object. For five years he has been conducting the work
of the Metalworking Faculty at Vkhutemas according to this
principle, and over the past few years the dynamically
organized object has gained increasing acceptance and thus
proved its viability and topical significance."
This enthusiastic commentary by Stepanova appeared in
1926 in Sovremennaia arkbitektura (Contemporary Architecture), the
organ of OSA (the Union of Contemporary Architects).36 As the
magazine's editor in chief, Gan regularly published the most
recent works of the Constructivist production artists, including
Zakhar Bykov, Miller, Morozov, Shestakov, Stepanova, and
Sokolov, most of them students of Rodchenko's at Vkhutemas.
Their works followed the same principles of variability and
multiple function Rodchenko had developed in the early 1920s.
In the combination furniture with complex functions, the
Constructivist ideal of the object that is "constructed
throughout" materialized in real life. As prototypes, they
embody the idea of a new, objective reality that does not
consist of massive objects and monumental buildings made to
last and exist independent of people. The Constructivist
conception of the object — and also of furniture and
architecture — rests on the idea of the infinitely transformable
structure made of minimal material elements. The
transformation of each structure leads to constantly new
functions. This structural metamorphosis enables the object to
take a different shape with each reassigned function while its
material elements remain the same.
In the Constructivist universe, objects exist solely as organs
of human activity. They adjust to people's actions, expand and
die with them, while constantly renewing their own shape and
function. The Constructivist objects are congruent
counterparts of the subject. Therein lies their Utopian
potential. Ideally, they would have transformed material reality
into an unrestricted space in which free people could act. But
in reality, they contributed to the total mobilization of the
people, whose lives were sucked into the modernization process
and restructured to the beat of machines.
The design theorist David Arkin remarked at the end of the
1920s that among the prototypes for workers' apartments
developed at the Metalworking Faculty, the most frequent
piece of furniture was the "multipurpose model, the divan-
table or the chair-bed. But these outwardly efficient models
solve in only a superficial manner the task of using the living
space with maximum economy. Therefore, the enthusiasm for
combination furniture apparent in the works of the young
Constructivists is by no means a positive development."37
This critical comment by a Constructivist partisan shows
that the designers of multifunctional furniture were not
exclusively or even primarily concerned with the actual
practical use of their creations. They held on to the principle of
the "object constructed throughout" postulated by the Inkhuk
Constructivists. A case can be made that they were only
marginally interested in producing functional, inexpensive, or
comfortable furniture for workers' apartments or clubs. For
them, what was really at stake was the life or death of art in the
painful rebirth of postrevolutionary society.
In a lecture at Inkhuk in March 1922, Kushner declared:
"Not only the object is exhausted. Its functions too are dying
off. It is thus being transformed into a useless thing while
remaining materially intact." Under circumstances where art in
its old, "individualist," bourgeois form had lost its function,
the Constructivists' survival strategy was to focus on the dying
object in order to revive it and thereby revive art. The rebirth
of art after the Revolution could only happen as a rebirth of
objects, since the individual and his artistic subjectivity were
not granted that right. The translation of the object into the
subjective form of the transcendental ego, which has neither
flesh nor blood, mass nor faktura but exists only as the "cold
structure" of self-consciousness, constitutes the greatness of
this materialized Utopia where the subject is identical with
material work and the objects it produces. Yet at the same
time, this Utopian construction inevitably failed as a strategy
for the rebirth of art, as it waived the critical distance from life,
surrendering to its restraining forces and sometimes even
strengthening them.
In 1913, years before the revolutionary changes in society,
Shklovskii made an outline for his lecture on "The
Resurrection of the Word," a kind of prelude to all
Constructivist theories of art: "The word-image and its
petrification . . . The death of objects . . . The theory of
reversal. The task of 'Futurism' — the revival of objects, to
return the experience of the world to the people . . . The
resurrection of objects."'8 These preparatory notes read like a
history of Constructivism in the 1920s — with the vital
difference that Shklovskii referred to the death, revival, and
resurrection of objects only in terms of art and perception and
warned against mistaking art for life. Later, in an article in Art
of the Commune, Shklovskii explicitly repeated this warning
with regard to the theory of production art, but the
Constructivists ignored him. They crossed the aesthetic
boundary between art and life in order to resurrect the material
and vital things. They gave them new forms. But art died in
the process.
Could things have turned out differently in those
perturbing times?
It may have been possible to hibernate in the "cold
structures" of Constructivism but one couldn't live in them.
— Translated, from the German, by Jiirgen Riehle
318
Notes
This essay is for Arthur Lehning.
i. A. M. Rodchenko, "Vse-opyty," 1921, A. M. Rodchenko and
V. F. Stepanova Archive, Moscow.
2. Varvara Stepanova, "On Constructivism," in Alexander
Lavrentiev, Stepanova, trans. Wendy Salmond (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), p. 175.
3. See Jane A. Sharp, "The Critical Reception of the 0.10
Exhibition: Malevich and Benua," in this volume, for an
account of their differences.
4. Novaia zhizn', March 27 and April 9, 1918.
5. Revoliutsionnoe tvorchestvo 1-2 (1918).
6. Izvestiia, April 16, 1918.
7. Anarkbtia, April II, 1918.
8. Anarkhiia, March 30, 1918.
9. Anarkhiia, March 28, 1918.
10. IZO. Vestnik Otdela izobrazitel'nykh iskusstv N.K.P. I
(March 10, 1921).
11. P/amia 35 (1919), p. 13.
12. Nikolai Punin, quoted in M. L-in, "Miting ob iskusstve,"
Iskusstvo kommuny 1 (December 7, 1918), reprinted as "Miting ob
iskusstve (24 XI 1918 g. v Petrograde)," in I. Matsa, ed.,
Sovetskoe iskusstvo za l$ let. Mater ialy i dokumentatsiia (Moscow
and Leningrad: Ogiz-Izogiz, 1933), pp. 175-76.
13. Nikolai Punin, "O novykh gruppirovkakh," Iskusstvo
kommuny 10 (February 9, 1919) as translated in Larissa Zhadova,
Malevich: Suprematism and Revolution in Russian Art. ipio-ipjo.
trans. Alexander Lieven (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982),
p. 322.
14. Birzhevye vedomosti, June 23, 1917.
15. Vechernie ogni 2 (April 1918).
16. Novaia zhizn', April 18 and May 1, 1918.
17. A. M. Rodchenko, "The Line," trans. James West, in Art
Into Life: Russian Constructivism, IP14-IP32, catalogue for
exhibition organized by the Henry Art Gallery, University of
Washington, Seattle, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and
the State Tret'yakov Gallery, Moscow (New York: Rizzoli,
1990), p. 71.
18. Iskusstvo kommuny, December 15, 1918.
19. Iskusstvo kommuny, January 12, 1919.
20. V. I. Lenin, "The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet
Government," in The Lenin Anthology, ed. Robert C. Tucker
(New York: W W. Norton, 1975).
21. Iskusstvo kommuny, February 23, 1919. See also Svetlana
Dzhafarova, "The Creation of the Museum of Painterly
Culture," in this volume.
22. "Deklaratsiia Otdela izobrazitel'nykh iskusstv i
khudozhestvennoi promyshlennosti po voprosu o printsipakh
muzeevedeniia, priniataia Kollegiei otdela v zasedanii 7 fevralia
1919 g.," Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo 1 (1919), p. 85.
23. Varvara Stepanova, diary, March 27, 1919, A. M. Rodchenko
and V. F. Stepanova Archive, Moscow.
24. Iskusstvo 7 (August 2, 1919).
25. Zhizn' iskusstva. September 20, 1923. Shklovskii's essay was
written in 1920.
26. Desiataia gosudarstvennaia vystavka. Bespredmetnoe tvorchestvo i
suprematizm (Moscow: Otdel IZO Narkomprosa, 1919), pp.
29-30.
27. Veshch '/Gegenstand/Objet 3 (1922).
28. "Problemy izucheniia literatury i iazyka," Novyi Lefix
(1928), pp. 36-37.
29. Iskusstvo kommuny 4 (February 22, 1919). On Rodchenko's
Linearism, see Aleksandr Lavrent'ev, "What Is Linearism?" in
this volume.
30. Rodchenko, "Line," p. 73.
31. Stepanova, diary, March 27, 1919.
32. Desiataia gosudarstvennaia vystavka.
33. Stepanova, "On Constructivism," p. 174.
34. M. Matiushin, "O vystavke 'poslednikh futuristov,'"
Ocharovannyi strannik. Al'manakh vesennii, 1916.
35. A. M. Rodchenko, "Liniia," 1921, A. M. Rodchenko and V.
F. Stepanova Archive, Moscow. This passage is not included in
the published English translation cited above.
36. Sovremennaia arkhitektura 1 (1926), p. 36.
37. Revoliutsiia i kul'tura 11 (1929).
38. V. Shklovskii, Zhili-byli (Berlin, 1923), p. 306.
319
fig. I
Larionov (center) in the hospital after being wounded in World War I,
191$.
320
The Third Path to
Non-Objectivity
Evgenii Kovtun
Western scholars have sometimes failed to make a distinction
between Abstractionism and non-objectivity, and use the terms
interchangeably. Yet Vasilii Kandinskii and Kazimir Malevich
are linked only by non-figuration — at which they arrive by
disparate, quite unshared paths. The nonrepresentational
element in their work grows out of different roots; Kandinskii
and Malevich stand in as sharp an opposition as Hume and
Hegel do in philosophy.
The abstract artist proceeds from the particular to the
general, turning away from the tangibility of objects. In
Kandinskii one may often observe a "semi-figurative" sketch
gradually being translated into a pure abstraction. This is the
path "from the bottom up."
Non-objectivity comes about by an opposite process.
The artist starts from general structural regularities that are
universal in character and makes them tangible in non-
objective forms. This is the path "from the top down," from
the general to the particular. Hence there are no natural or
earthly realia, not even any that are "cleansed" of figuration,
concealed behind Malevich's non-objective forms. Non-
objectivity "populates" space with a new reality which comes
into being according to laws analogous to those of nature.
Contemporary scholars rightly distinguish two currents
within the movement toward non-figuration: that of
Kandinskii, i.e., what could be called expressive abstraction,
and that of Malevich, i.e., geometric abstraction. Artists of the
one persuasion — in the words of Lev Iudin, a pupil of
Malevich's — prefer to "experience" (thus Kandinskii), the
others, to "construct" (thus Malevich and Mondrian). Yet even
at the time, a third, middle, path to non-objectivity could be
discerned in Russian art; its adherents attempted to reconcile
opposing trends, wanting simultaneously to experience and to
construct. This was the path first taken by Mikhail Larionov
with his Rayism.
Art historians have caused quite a muddle in pinpointing
the origin of Rayism, dating it as far back as 1909 — a time
when Larionov was producing Primitivist works. Iurii
Annenkov, writing in 1966, was the first to set out a spurious
chronology of Larionov 's work: "Nineteen nine was the decisive
year in the artistic biography of Larionov and Goncharova, and
in the destinies of art in general: in that year both exhibited
paintings which laid the foundation of the first abstract
movement, dubbed 'Rayism' (Larionov 's term) . . . Numbers of
'Rayist' paintings by Larionov and Goncharova appeared,
between 1909 and 1912, at the avant-garde exhibitions of Jack
of Diamonds, Free Aesthetics, and Donkey's Tail."' As it
happened, Annenkov listed precisely those exhibitions which
did not show Rayist works and managed to keep silent about
those which had them in abundance.
Following Annenkov, other writers added their voices to
the confusion. Waldemar George, author of a 1966 monograph
on Larionov, moved the Rayist work Steklo {Glass) from the
1912 Mir iskusstva (World of Art) exhibition to 1909. We note
the same antedating in the catalogue of the 1969 Larionov show
in New York. The author of the catalogue essay, Francois
Daulte, headlined one of its sections "The Rayonniste Period
(1909— 1912)" and advanced the fiction that Larionov had made
his first declaration on Rayism in 1910 in A. Kraft's studio.2
Camilla Gray, who had access to Russian sources, did not make
such gross misstatements, but even she assigned Glass to 1909
and had it exhibited in a one-day Larionov show which took
place in 1911 at the Society of Free Aesthetics in Moscow. Yet
among the 124 canvases listed in the catalogue of that
exhibition neither Glass nor any other Rayist painting appears.
What was Larionov 's reaction to the misdating of his
works? As indulgent as could be; he even abetted it. As early as
in the catalogue of the Exposition Natalia Gontcharova et Michel
321
Larionov held in June 1914 at the Galerie Paul Guillaume in
Paris, he changed the dates of many works, assigning them to
earlier times. Larionov was inarguably among the pioneers of
non-figurative painting (in the 1940s, which saw a wave of
enthusiasm for Abstractionism, researchers sought out
"precursors" of the movement; Michel Seuphor's 1949 book
about the origins of abstract art recalled the by-then-forgotten
Rayism)3 and was not averse to being ranked as the very first.
In Larionov 's solo shows in New York (1969) and Brussels
(1976), his Abstraktnaia kartina {Abstract Painting) was assigned
to 1907 (!) — to a time, that is, when the artist was interested in
signboards and was painting his Parikmakhery {Barbers).
Abstract Painting, executed in the spirit of "painterly Purism,"
is clearly a work of the early 1920s, and entirely out of place
with Larionov 's Primitivist works.
The earliest "trace" of Rayism can be observed in Larionov 's
illustrations to a small book by Aleksei Kruchenykh,
Starinnaia liubov' {Old-Time Love), which was published in mid-
October 1912. Larionov thereafter showed Rayist canvases
simultaneously at two exhibitions: Glass and Etiud lucbistyi
{Rayist Study) at the World of Art exhibition in November
1912, and Luchistaia kolbasa i skumbriia {Rayist Sausage and
Mackerel) at the Soiuz molodezhi (Union of Youth) exhibition
which opened on December 4th. Prior to this there had been
no mention of Rayism either in the press or in exhibition
catalogues.
The most representative showings of Rayism were at the
Mishen '{Target, Moscow, 1913), No. 4. Futuristy, lucbisty, primitiv
{No. 4: Futurists, Rayists, Primitives, Moscow, 1914), and Moskva.
1915 god (Moscow: The Year 1915, Moscow, 1915) exhibitions. By
this time, Natal'ia Goncharova, Aleksandr Shevchenko, and
Sergei Romanovich were already working by the canons of
Rayism. A special role in the rise of Rayism was played by a
remarkable painter of Larionov 's group, Mikhail Le-Dantiu.
Il'ia Zdanevich implies in an unpublished article of 1918 that
Le-Dantiu was the force behind Larionov 's Rayism. He writes:
"Rayism is taking shape — the unsuccessful realization of a
colleague's brilliant discoveries."4 And indeed, in Le-Dantiu's
paintings of 1912 and 1913 one may make out the appearance of
Rayist structures.
In 1913 Larionov published a brochure, Luchizm {Rayism),
and an article, "Luchistaia zhivopis'" ("Rayist Painting"), in the
Oslinyi khvost i mishen' {Donkey's Tail and Target) miscellany. The
artist laid down the main tenets of his theory most succinctly
in a pamphlet entitled Luchizm Larionova {The Rayism of
Larionov), which was distributed to the public at a debate at
the Target exhibition and from which the following is
excerpted:
Doctrine of irradiability. Radiation of reflected light (color dust).
Reflectivity. Realist Rayism, depicting existing forms. Rejection of
forms in painting as existing apart from their imaging in the eye.
Provisional representation of the ray by the line. Erasure of the
barriers between nature and what is referred to as the surface of the
painting. The rudiments of Rayism in antecedent arts. The doctrine of
the creation of new forms. Spatial form. Form — which arises from the
intersection of rays from various objects — isolated by the volition of the
artist. Conveyance of sensations of the non-finite and the
transtemporal. The structuring of paint according to the laws of
painting (i.e., ft/faktura {density} and color). The natural downfall
of all preceding art, which, thanks to Rayist forms, has become, like
life, merely an object for the artist's observation.1
Rayism, according to Larionov 's thinking, would sever
painting from objectivity and turn it into an autonomous and
self-sufficient art of color. The painting would cease to be a
reflection of the world of objects — it would become itself an
object, a part of reality aesthetically organized by the artist.
We do not see objects themselves — they are a kind of
Kantian "thing in itself — but we perceive aggregates of rays
emanating from objects, which are depicted in the painting as
lines of color. Larionov divides Rayism into a Realist species,
which retains traces of objectivity, and a wholly
nonrepresentational species, in which external links with the
visible world have been sundered.
Larionov 's tenet on light and color is of particular interest.
Light refracted through particles of matter causes coloration, or
"color dust," as the artist calls it. Here he anticipates the view
expressed by the philosopher Pavel Florenskii in 1919:
Thus light is continuous. Not so optical media, which become
saturated with light and pass it on to us: they are not continuous, they
are granular; they constitute a kind of finest dust and themselves
contain other dust, so fine as to defy any microscope, yet consisting of
separate granules, distinct bits of matter. Those glorious hues which
adorn the heavenly sphere are nothing but a means of relating
indivisible light and fractured matter: we may assert that the
coloration of sunlight is that aftertaste, that change of aspect, which is
imparted to the sunlight by the dust of the earth, and possibly by the
even finer dust of the sky. 6
The critics looked upon Rayism as one of the varieties of
abstract art; but the matter was more complex. Impressionism,
preoccupied with color values, relegated plastic construction to
the background. Cubism, by contrast, developed the structural
element at the expense of the painterly. Velimir Khlebnikov,
speaking of the Russian avant-garde, observed quite cogently:
"As the chemist splits water into oxygen and hydrogen, so
these artists have broken down the art of painting into its
constituent forces, now isolating the element of color, now that
of line."7
Larionov had no wish to sacrifice either. His Rayism was an
astonishing attempt to combine the apparently incompatible:
the vibrating color of Impressionism and the clarity of
construction peculiar to Cubism. Their outward non-
objectivity notwithstanding, the Rayist works of Larionov —
with their movement toward nature, their luminous and
intricately vibrating painting — call up natural sensations and
associations. His Luchistyi peizazh (Rayist Landscape, 1912-13,
fig. no. 3) is a case in point. The painterly-spiritual
visionariness of Kandinskii and the stark non-objectivity of
Malevich's Suprematism alike were alien to Larionov. Always
receiving creative impulses from the visible world, he was
unable to sever all links with nature. This singularity —
Rayism's opposition to both Abstractionism and
Suprematism — was noted at the time by Nikolai Punin, who
held that the theory of Rayism had been advanced by Larionov
"as a barrier against certain rationalistic tendencies of Cubism"
and in practice was "the fruit of very subtle realistic
juxtapositions."8
The Rayist canvases, especially those labeled "Realist
Rayism," revealed the nature of Larionov 's painterly gift and
laid bare the wealth offaktura which was vehicle for the "color
dust." Without a subject and virtually or entirely without an
object, these works left the viewer one-on-one with painterly
values. Larionov remarked on this himself: "What is precious
to the lover of painting finds its maximum expression in the
Rayist painting. The objects we see in life play no role there,
while what constitutes the very essence of painting can be
shown best of all: the interplay of color, its saturation, the
interrelations of color masses, depth, faktura — by this persons
interested in painting may become totally absorbed."9 Non-
objectivity may instantly expose the poverty of an artist's
painterly gift, but it is also capable of announcing the wealth
322
of another's.
Larionov's Rayism did not appear ex nihilo; the artist
himself pointed to the "rudiments of Rayism" in the art
preceding it. In the late paintings and drawings of Mikhail
Vrubel' (such as Sbestikrylyi serafim [Six-Winged Seraph, 1904]
and the Proroki [Prophets, 1903-4} cycle) one discovers plastic
structures which, as it were, presage the Rayist structures of
Larionov. Nikolai Tarabukin reports that "in N. A. Prakhov's
possession there was a pencil drawing of a male nude done as if
in a 'Rayist' manner. Thus even this shortlived movement in
painting, 'invented' by M. Larionov, was to a certain extent
anticipated by Vrubel1."10 A 
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